<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>On the War of the Jewels and the War of Wrath: by TheLightdancer</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24950611">On the War of the Jewels and the War of Wrath:</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer'>TheLightdancer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The War of the Jewels Against the Elder Queen of the Stars [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU- Alignment Switch, Aftermath of Torture, Alignment Flip Angbang themes, Beware the Light of the Infinite Stars, Evil Varda is her own warning, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, Mind Control, Nothing explicit but Varda is not nice and Ilmare does not like it, War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, War is hell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:56:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>106,025</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24950611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>And now we come to the meat of the First Age, the War of the Jewels and the War of Wrath. The Noldor defy the Ban of the Valar and their Doom to wage a hopeless war on the Star Queen, and have it underscored that all their valor means nothing, and is but a slow march to the dismal dregs of defeat. So shall pass the First Age, an age of wonder and magic, and of monsters and of nightmares made flesh.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amarië/Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Beren Erchamion/Lúthien Tinúviel, Celeborn/Galadriel | Artanis, Elbereth Gilthoniel | Varda Elentári/Ilmarë, Elu Thingol | Elwë Singollo/Melian, Eärendil/Elwing (Tolkien), Haleth of the Haladin/Original Character(s), Idril Celebrindal/Tuor, Niënor Níniel/Túrin Turambar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The War of the Jewels Against the Elder Queen of the Stars [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804138</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Of the Fall of Humanity and the Origins of Dwarves and Treefolk:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>There are ironies in the narratives of Arda, given that now there are proofs that these events were real, that the fossils of Elves and Dwarves mean that for the first time mythology is moved from ancient tales transcribed by an Arab who declared himself Prophet of the Starlight and by an English professor from Birmingham. A variant of the Christian narrative of the Fall is true, within its limits. Yet the original homeland of humanity, Hildorien, was in the deep far south, in the zone of what is now Ethiopia, and all the first generation of humanity and into later ones were dark of skin and dark of hair. Some retained this and bright blue eyes, and others such as the Istari who lingered in Arda beyond the fall of Ilmare the Hell-Queen and her Realm of the World Destroyers in the War of Ruin, who had these traits were never human at all. It is here, in this narrative, an interpolation and a rare, precious document of Westernesse from the reign of Ar-Zimraphil, he who was named Kull in the writings of later years, preserving still more ancient legends, that the closest thing to the origin of humanity preserved by those closest to it is noted.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman..</p><p>HILDORIEN:</p><p>In the beginning, Eru created man in His image and in His likeness. Male and female He created them.</p><p>And it was in Hildorien that the rich brown-skinned sons and daughters of the first generations awoke. The first to awaken would come to call himself Aduna, his wife would name herself Avvah, and though they were not alone nor close to it, they were the first to awaken. It was them who saw the towering figure kneeling beside them, a figure who where they were the rich dark brown hue that matched the Earth, but her skin was a thing that seemed to simultaneously drink in light....and from her body echoed a strange droning sound that became a wondrous kind of music that held them spellbound and awakened the other children of humanity.</p><p>The first sights when they awoke were the sight of a being like the night sky made flesh, light gleaming from that that sang with the chorus of the stars. She spoke in a tongue that was understood in the soul more than the ear, harsh and guttural and full of too many consonants and words that were over-long. Before her most of humanity prostrated themselves and bowed, and her starlight gleamed and sang and their prayers, half-formed and in the first guttural Adunaic began to speak and sing in tune with the music of the spheres.</p><p>As this began to match, Varda became less human and soon it was only by the shapes and gleams of her starlight that her body could be seen to be loosely anthropoid at all, and she, the towering Star-Queen, became humanity's first Goddess, and the star-madness took hold then, and served to divide those who would become the father of the servants of the Ruinous Powers from those who would be the Edain. The Edain bowed out of fear so that they would avoid staring directly into the light of the stars, from Varda or from those soul-thirsting horrors that gibbered and sang and echoed in the triumphant peals of Varda's voice, her laughter, and all else besides.</p><p>Those who looked squarely on moved from being prostrate to their knees, and began to ululate, matching the star-chorus in meter, and were the first to move out, and to spread across the world. Some, the very distant ancestors of those who would become the Andamanese, the people of Africa (later known as Rhun to the children of the Third Age, or Far Harad) across the immensity of its span, and the ancestors of the first Australians would find places to dwell removed from the soul-devouring star-gibberings and would repent and build civilizations that warred as incessantly with the servants of Varda as any in the north, unknown to them, and unsung.</p><p>Others began the long sequences of migrations to the north, becoming those known as the Easterlings and the Haradrim, ever-shifting names of peoples who would from fear and from gazing too overtly and too long into the stars become thralls to the Star-Queen or the Lady of the World-Ravagers. They were initial travelers with those who became the Edain, the Beorians, the Halethians, and the Hadorians. To the north they were drawn, one by traces of the pure and holy light of Aman, one by the gleaming hell-lights of Eldaband, and the quest for the center of the madness of the stars on Earth, the Singing Towers.</p><p>ON THE ORIGIN OF THE DWARVES:</p><p>Of the Dwarves there are two tales told of their origin. One, one of the few documents in Khazad written in their own hand, is their own account of their origin and shall be related first. In the time before the Moon and the Sun, Mahal the Maker and the others of the Great Gods in the Far West confronted the treacherous Star-Vampire whose soul is the hunger of the lights of Hell. She descended from the stars and brought her images with her as a mountain lit in lights that drove with her a third of the lesser Gods and Goddesses, and she kindled great fires that turned the verdant and wondrous paradise the Gods and Goddesses originally made into a blasted heath of rock and desert.</p><p>Mahal the Maker looked and he sighed, for the labor would be great, and he could foresee that the time of war and strife to come would carry with it great sorrows of its own. He desired helpers, the Sons of Earth, meant to labor in it and to know its veins and its lifeblood, to work wonders. Forge-masters, those who could see a rock and produce a plow, a sword, or the thunder-sticks that laid low the monsters of the Star-Vampire. With chisel he went to work, and he forged the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves, making them in his image and in his likeness, stout and great of strength, with thick beards that mirrored the shorter but no less manly and mighty beard of Mahal's own. He had built the shape but not yet the faces of the Seven Mothers when Eru came to Mahal and spoke to him, asking the Maker if He aspired to be as the Star-Vampire and to make servants who would ravage and ruin and lay low and seek to drain the power and the presence of the Soul. </p><p>Mahal wept in sorrow and asked how the Creator could chastise a son who had seen the beauty of Arda, and of its great rocks and veins and life-blood. Who had seen the Star-Vampire descend from the stars and burn the world to ashes, leaving the Gods to remake that which would be made. The Creator was silent and Mahal, sighing in sorrow, took his hammer and the Fathers and Mothers clung to each other in fear and begged pardon, only for the Creator to give his blessing. The Khazad are made to heal the world's wounds, and to endure war and the glare of the Star-Vampire. Of all that is in Arda our souls are strong, though we do not seek the starlight we can cross by night under a clear sky with no ravages. We endure flame and heat more than any other, a task that makes our forge-work infinitely easier.</p><p>We shall see each of our Seven Fathers and Seven Mothers come seven times, and then our last generations shall become as stone and sleep and with their forebears who shall again come as stone, await until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom, where Mahal's voice shall call and we shall answer, and remake the world that the Star-Queen marred. Past that we know nothing, and are content to know nothing, for it is the quest to know too much that made the Star-Vampire the Fallen.</p><p>The Quendi origin has a few traits in common but differs otherwise.</p><p>It is the variant preserved in the direct text of the Red Book and presented countless times in different context, in olden days as proof that appraisals of gaps between two species that were not human in profoundly different ways rebounded to prove the variants of that within humanity. Curiously, no texts that dealt with the views of the Quendi of other Quendi are cited, perhaps because in the avarice of the Noldor and in their follies in waging war for the sake of power and against the proven cosmic evil that for a time dwelt in bodily form until in the Ardan Third Age the last trace was destroyed, Too, the emergence of the association of darkness with evil and with inferiority, and the concept of that which is primitive overshadows that cosmic evil in its bodily form is and has always been associated not with darkness but the soul-hunger of starlight and its dread song. </p><p>The Quendi version places the origin earlier, before the coming of the Shadow-Queen to the surface of the primordial paradise-Earth and claims that Aule made the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves without reference to the Mothers, and that he did so from an excess of enthusiasm and sought to make those who would people Arda before the coming of the Firstborn. Aule and Illuvatar exchange words much the same in both takes, save that in the Quendi version there is a firm and emphatic view of the Quendi as the Firstborn, a view that was irrelevant to the culture and the traditions of the Khazad, and so who was first and who was second has no place, only the role of creation, destruction, and the cycle of rebirth and destruction.</p><p>It is the passages that speak sneeringly of the Dwarves that have been approvingly cited by those from the era when Abdul Hazred's first translation made these passages known, in the theology of Islam and of Christianity and of other paths alike. Proof that what is mythology of two separate species can be cited by others for their own purposes, and yet another point in common with the third species of Earth relative to Those Who Were Before.</p><p>It was the seven-times reincarnated Dwarves who first encountered the Elves and deployed in force at the War under the Stars, sealing the friendship of Nogrod and Belegost with the Elves in blood (Khazad Dum would begin to reach its apex toward the end of the First Age and through the Second, but does not come into the tales of the First and the Longbeards and House of Durin, the most fabled Dwarves of later generations were utterly unknown to the Quendi and the first humans of the First Age).</p><p>Two species had met, and the third would arrive in the wake of the Dagor Agloreb, fighting their way through one of the columns of Eldar.</p><p>As yet, Humanity had awakened in Hildorien, and was on the move to the north, but where the Great Enemy knew this and placed Eldar in their path to stop them and to slow them, the Elves only knew humanity was there when two of the sons of Feanor encountered the Halethians and Finrod Felagund of the House of Finarfin the Hadorians. What contacts, if any, Humanity and the Dwarves had are known only to those who would have recorded such tales, and such records, where they existed, did not enter the pages of the Red Book.</p><p>The proud Kings of the Firebeards and the Broadbeards, known to the Elves as Eruchion and Denethor, for they did not share their names in their own language were feted as allies with a victory fairly won, and their encounters with Fingolfin of the Noldor, who would become the leader of the Siege of Angband and would soon head to a brave quest heralded and rightly so to the rescue of Maedhros, shaped the warm amity of Noldor and Khazad, warmest of all friendships of Elves and Dwarves bar that of the Sindarin Legolas Thranduilion and Gimli son of Gloin, the Dwarf most fond of Elves and the most stout friend of all Elves in all of the history of both species.</p><p>Each compared the armor and the making of the other and praised it warmly, though King Denethor of the Broadbeards shook his head and warned the 'Tall Ears' that the attempt to go near the 'Star-Pillars' would make him mad, and so heroic a king did not need so cruel a fate. Yet the light of Aman was its own shield even after the Darkening, and it would only fade during the four centuries of the Siege. It was in these first meetings that the first versions of the origins of the Dwarves were told and recited in bardic performances, the first shared by Dwarves and Elves, and the Elves in turn sang of awakening under the soul-devouring starlight and how the Rider came and took them to the Undying Lands.</p><p>When Fingolfin departed to rescue Maedhros from the torment on the walls of the Crystal Pillars that gleamed with the fearful light of the Stars, the two Dwarf-clans remained present, officially claiming to await the return of the heroic king and privately seeking to decide where would be a means to manage the newcomers who would be without leaders or heroes.</p><p>THE ORIGIN OF THE TREEFOLK:</p><p>The origin of those known as Onodrim and Ents and Huorns, the Tree-sheperds who were the last of the children of the Valar to be seen directly into the early Hyborian age, when the very last of the Ents encountered the great wanderer Conan of Cimmeria and died telling Conan seven tales that Conan in turn told and ensured were preserved, is the most mythological and was another of the tales told between the Dwarves and the Elves in their first meeting. The Dwarves were ever wary and even hostile to the Onodrim, for the Dwarves' forges were hungry things and needed wood to fuel them, and the Onodrim performing their functions led to clashes.</p><p>In that origin, at the dawn, when the Star-Queen was filling the sky with the horrors that burn and gibber and demand harvests of souls and had yet to descend upon the world and to seek to clash with its Gods and Goddesses, Yavanna Kementari, she who shields mortals from the Star-gaze and Star-Song, spoke to her husband. Her Olvar, the term used by the Quendi for trees, were long in the growing and swift in the felling and it was those which were the great shields and hardy. The loss of each was a thing that must be shielded as long as possible in the will of Illuvatar, until reverence for forests became engrained enough along with the fear of starlight.</p><p>Aule responded with a light joke tinged with contempt and so Yavanna went to the Allfather, that entity that dwelt with the seven lights in the Halls beyond space and time, and pleaded for her creations, and in particular for the great trees, the shields that were worked with magic that warded away the Starlight and were incapable of defending themselves. And the Allfather heard her prayer and granted Ent and Entwife and Huorn, mightiest of all the beings that moved and spoke and danced in the world, those who harvested and shielded trees and were the greatest mysteries known.</p><p>Triumphantly did Yavanna turn and say "Ha! Now your children shall have to fear the guardians of my work!"</p><p>Aule shrugged and said "Nonetheless, they shall have need of wood" and continued to hammer the molten jewelry upon his forge.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The World Destroyers March:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Varda, as the Sun rises, seeks to destroy it before it gains a place of hope. Then, aiming to pre-empt the bloc of Free Peoples in the prelude to the Dagor Aglareb, sends Ilmare and her Muspelli, the World-Destroyers, to attack the place where the armies of Elves and Dwarves meet. Maedhros of the House of Feanor finds himself a hand shorter but the Free Peoples at last find leadership.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>THE DAY THE SUN ROSE:</p><p>It was in the wake of the rising of the Sun that the world changed, as the Days of the Trees had become the Days of the Sun, and in the Daystar's embrace for the first time, life adjusted to a star that was not a menace but a friend. The first day when the Sun roved over the world and cast its light down, the masses hid, for the fear that it would be the first of Varda's monsters to come near the new world. On that day, the gates of the great Fortress of Angband opened and a great figure that was restricted to forms more mortal than not emerged as a winged thing that was greater in scale than the fledgling Anacalagon the Black, greatest of all Melkor's dragons and ever the scene of hope where his vast wings flew. It was no mere monster with scales and great wings and a face that roared  and eyes that gleamed like suns, but Varda herself in one of the forms that she began to take, things that left fear and horror in their wake. She burst through the clouds, glorying in the light and the song of her star-chorus, great bat-wings beating. </p><p>Arien turned to her and for one of the few times in her time as the Sun was not the great orb of light but a shining and beautiful woman, a colossus to match the scale of the Star-Queen on her descent. Varda too transformed and savoring that her altered form retained the wings, she grinned and then hurled a dagger at Arien, who roared in pain when struck. At the cry of the Sun the few who'd dared to savor the new kind of starlight hid, and besides the Sun was an image of another figure, a being of blackness illuminated by the eerie howling of star-song and her eyes flashed star-fire as her laughter pealed, triumphantly.</p><p>Arien removed the dagger and hurled it to the ground, a pillar of iron that melted and over time became Uluru, the sacred rock of certain communities of the southernmost continent, and turned to Varda with bleary eyes. Varda looked at her with a sharp annoyance, and Arien's fires blazed outward, blasting at the towering woman of darkness, the venom on the blade largely expunged. From that venom came the shifting patterns of darkness on the sun that humanity calls sunspots, the traces of the wound that Varda dealt the Sun. Later, in the wake of her duel with Fingolfin, she would attack the Moon and Tilion would gain the shadow on the moon that in the eyes of some is as a rabbit and others as a man from Arien cleansing the venom by fire.</p><p>That day the fires of Arien buffeted her and she spread her arms, a being that hovered with starlight illuminating traces of her fingers and the sickly songs echoing in sinister meters that snuck into ears, minds, hearts, dreams.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>You play at being a star, Vala of Fire. I made the stars, the true stars, the ones that sing so sweetly. I have not killed you, because your fires are too strong for the venom of the spheres. In that sense you are strong. But now, your reward is ever to be the daystar, and to listen for thousands, tens of thousands, millions of years to the music of my spheres. to my sweet chorus of creation.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Unharmed, Varda spread her arms as a choir-master, and behind her rose a shattering crescendo of the star-song and Arien shut her eyes and moved onward, Varda's laughter echoing, pealing like thunder to the world below. Varda descended on Arda, rising but twice more into the skies before she would become grounded forever. The descent of her form with its starlight cast terror in the eyes of even the hardened Sindarin, to whom the starlight was a hazard but one that willpower and iron discipline matched. The Star-Kindler was always a special horror for her starlight was stronger, and it burned hotter, and its music called with poisoned sweetness even to the ears of Dwarves.</p><p>For the first time the armies of the Siege saw, however briefly, the Great Enemy they had come to assail.</p><p>She stood as a giant, a being of perfect darkness, and what was and was not akin to bare feet trod on the hard rock of the barren landscapes before Angband, where the star-flame heat meant no snow nor water could form naturally. She stood tall with open arms, her hair trailing at a a diagonal angle across her shoulder, whorls of the horrid singing-light intersecting and dissonant with other harmonies, her eyes the gleaming howl of galaxies. For a time the armies had their chances to open fire at her with their weapons and she stood, daring them to fire at her and to test her strength.</p><p>Nothing happened and a single curt:</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Hah</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Echoed from lips marked by nebulae that lit with the ghostly light of newborn stars, lips that vanished into a face again largely featureless outside those eyes and that impression of hair, and she returned beneath the gate.</p><p>The Dwarf-Lord Denethor turned to Caranthir of the sons of Feanor:</p><p>"You came to fight a war against<em> that</em>?"</p><p>The Quendi-lord gave him a sour look.</p><p>"So did you, my lord."</p><p>The Dwarf shrugged.</p><p>"Well, my people are always more eager to fight than to think, it's a vice we shared. It relieves me to know we are not unique."</p><p>Caranthir grunted, and from him it was the equivalent of a belly-laugh, and the Dwarf laughed his own peal.</p><p>Above them, Fingolfin, who had patiently scaled the roof of the fortress during the distractions of Varda seeking to ascend and attack the sun, and from her disappearance and return, girded himself further. Here, on the Crystal towers, the songs did not drone, they sang and sang loudly, songs of blood and skulls, life for life, death for death, an echoing that ached into his bones and it felt like his very soul. Yet with an expression of stone he climbed and willed himself not to listen, until he found hanging the exhausted and weeping form of Maedhros.</p><p>"Hail cousin, and well met."</p><p>Maedhros looked at him in wonder.</p><p>"Are you....truth?"</p><p>"I am."</p><p>"Kill me. I cannot.....I cannot bear this. The music, the music of the spheres!"</p><p>Fingolfin shook his head.  </p><p>"No, cousin. We are Noldor. We do not yield to the lying songs of the Star-Tyrant. I am sorry, cousin. This will hurt you." From a pouch on his belt he drew a great knife and as he sliced, the song thrummed at a different note. Drums, drums beating the word "Blood Blood Blood. Blood Blood Blood."</p><p>It was a brutal hack-work but it succeeded, the blade severing Maedhros's hand at the wrist and as Maedhros clasped his cousin, something stunned them. A flying dragon, one of Melkor's smaller creatures. One of the brood of fabled Anacalagon, and it hovered beneath them and they jumped onto its back, flying the dragon to their camp.</p><p>A FEW HOURS EARLIER:</p><p>In the wake of her return, the Queen flexed, looking at herself in a silvered mirror she had commissioned from a captive taken in one of the earlier raids of Ilmare's suzerainty over her spheres. She had repaid him with a simple neck-snap given courtesy of Ilmare and her enhanced gauntlets, the price of freedom freely given. In the mirror gleamed the pure light of the jewels she had taken from Feanor Thrice-Torn. </p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Such strangeness, this artificial starlight. The vermin did this, somehow. He conjured something like what I made, but....different. Softer, lovelier. Yet still starlight. Mine. All mine.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>She giggled, a warbling and dissonant note in the laughter that echoed in the acoustics of her castle, and strode to her throne, taking a more regal posture there.</p><p>She saw by her throne two of her main lieutenants. One, the towering and flaming form of Gothmog, a ram-like face on a bear-like body, the whole gleaming with a fire akin to that of Arien but filtered through her own harmonics. Then again, Gothmog and Arien were brother and sister, so some family resemblance was to be expected. Her gaze turned to the other, clad in her golden armor, the armor marked with the runes and angles that were meant to invoke the power of starlight and its great song.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Ilmare, my good and faithful servant?</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>She bowed, then knelt.</p><p>
  <strong>What is thy bidding, my master?</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Take your Muspelli, your World-Destroyers. Our would-be foes have a point of juncture between the stunted pigs of the Earth and the vermin of Aman. Take the World Destroyers and probe their strength. If you shatter them, we shall know one thing. If you return and their lines hold, well......that will require...other options.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Ilmare raised herself to her feet and hammered her fist against her breastplate.</p><p>
  <strong>As thee will it, O Mistress of the Known Universe.</strong>
</p><p>ilmare went then, gathering with her seven others, the elite of her Muspelli bounded and gathered together in the long years of the Mistress's absence in Elvenhome.</p><p>
  <em>Of Ilmare the Hell-Queen, the Sinmara of the Norse, and also the Surtr of the Norse as well, there is much told across later and other years. She becomes the Hell-Queen of the Ream of the World-Destroyers, the great and splendid foe of the Free Peoples. Of her are as many tales told in this Red Book as of her Mistress the Great Enemy, the Star-Kindler whose eyes of hell gaze down on mortals and sing for souls and skulls. She is the root of all tales of Fire-Giants and of Fire in its most malevolent forms, the scourge that burns. Of her, it is the deepest root of the concept of the Hell of Christianity, of Ahriman of Iran, Shaitan of the Muslims. Her Mistress it is said fell before time began, yet it is her who played a part in all the wicked deeds of the greater, and it is her whose great sword, the Twilight-sword, and its name was passed down in whispers, the venom of Typhon, the August-Darkling Star of Shinto, and in the most direct sense in the imagery of the Fire-Giants of the World-Ravager-Kingdom of the Germanic tales. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In the First Age, she served another, and was seemingly content to do so, for often she was given great responsibility and power. Hers it is said are the hands that made the Eldar, the Jotnar, the Fire-Winds and storms of flame that consumed worlds. Hers the hands that though of fire drowned Westernesse, the fabled realm of Kull and his predecessors, and Ar-Pharazon the Master of Mankind in water. To the servants of the Star-Queen her legacies were infamous, to the Sindar likewise. Her introduction to the scions of the Noldor and the Naugrim came in the wake of the Battle Under the Stars, in the time between this and the Glorious Battle. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>There were giants in the Earth in those days, and also afterward, when the Daughters of Illuvatar saw the daughters of men, and took to themselves what they would, as they would. As the beings that built the first cities are known, so are the traces of the demons. </em>
</p><p><em>Remember the name Ilmare, and pray that never shall she regain bodily form as she held it in the end of the War of Ruin</em>.-<em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>The first stirrings of what was coming for them was when the Sindar trembled, and a word passed along their lines. Two words, in truth. "Hell." "Hell-Queen."</p><p>Denethor looked to Caranthir and to Maglor.</p><p>"What are they prattling about?"</p><p>Caranthir and Maglor stiffened.</p><p>"Utumno. Hell. They're saying....Utumnotari....."</p><p>He looked at the Naugrim-Prince.</p><p>"Something's coming."</p><p>From the other side they witnessed the appearance of a being in armor of gold, and suddenly a chill went through the Noldor, who knew of the being in armor from the tales that had been told them of the War of the Powers.</p><p>"Ilmare," breathed Maglor.</p><p>"Who?"</p><p>"The.....champion....of the Star-Queen," murmured Maglor, his face pale. The being was armored in gold, holding a sword, and along that sword gleamed flames, and behind her strode others like her.</p><p>"Well there's a formidable one and no mistake," murmured Denethor.</p><p>"Open fire," he barked to his mortar chiefs, and indeed the heavier mortars of the Khazad, weapons that were small cannon to less hardy species did open fire. Yet in a deftness of motion each explosion seemed either deflected, somehow, or absorbed into the fire and fury at her disposal. Behind her marched six like her in less refined and ornate armor, yet likewise equipped, swords of fire held against shields of strange starlight-metal.</p><p>Firepower echoed but against the magic of Ilmare and of her Muspelli, the firepower was weakened or negated.</p><p>As one the Elves and Dwarves formed a line, the most incautious of both moving by squads against her, She tilted her head as her servants moved to spread out into a kind of line of battle, her shining face seeming to gleam with amusement, and then flashes of fire her sword arced and those around her died and they did not die cleanly, though the heat cauterized the wounds. Bodies flew apart with the strength of her blows, and thirty soldiers, fifteen Elves and fifteen Dwarves, were hewn, the Dwarves dying more slowly and painfully but dying all the same.</p><p>The horror of the being of gleaming starlight and of the music of the spheres that gleamed with her motion was amplified when she raised her sword, Star-Flame seeming to gather above and around it.</p><p>The heat shimmered around her presence and Elves and Dwarves alike found it difficult to breathe. Emulating their commander, the other Muspelli raised their swords likewise, channeling into the power of the stars a growing mass of Star-flame. An eerie song echoed, beautiful and the words could not be recalled save that they held all who heard them spellbound and carried with them the charnel-stench of the graveyard and the iron reek of blood. As one the swords of the Muspelli descended and from the erupted a wall of flame, both blade and battering ram, and while the Sons of Feanor had the presence to hit the dirt and dragged the Dwarf-Lord with them, the army behind them burned and melted, the stench of burned flesh meshing with boiling blood, and each looked behind them.</p><p>
  <strong>I am Ilmare, Mistress of the Muspellir, the World-Ravagers. Seven times have I fought no less a foe than Mairon, herald of all Arda, and only once has any boasted that they have made me retreat from a field. With the mightiest of the Maia, the closest we have to a king, I have traded blades and honor is more than even. You are the Children of Iluvatar, vermin less than the mice and the rats that seek to infest the crops of those of you who try to make a living from the dust of the ground. Your fire cannot harm me. Behold what the fires of the Twilight-Sword that heralds the end of your kind and of your races does to your breeds.</strong>
</p><p>Turning with closed eyes from the scenes of horror behind them, it was Denethor who snarled and raised Dwarven axes, one in each hand, and clanged them together.</p><p><strong>You'll not threaten us with a fire-thrower, woman! We are the Free Peoples of Arda, we'll yield to no Devil's tricks.</strong> </p><p>Her gaze turned straight forward him, and she looked straight at him.</p><p>
  <strong>Animals that dig in the dirt should not interrupt the speech of the higher life of the infinite reaches of space.</strong>
</p><p>Then she froze. A smell, a smell of the old days, when the infinite reaches of space had not yet become so, before her Mistress had called her to her service and broken her with the music of the spheres. Wyrm.</p><p>She looked up, and her servants turned around, and then the armies of Arda gasped in awe and trembling. A dragon, a small one the size of a subadult Mumakil, and on it two of the Quendi. Pale and jaw-clenched Maedhros, now One-Handed, and Lord Fingolfin of the House of Finwe.</p><p>Ilmare gazed in genuine and unfiltered shock, and the dragon landed, lowering them from his back.</p><p>He bared his wings and snarled at her and she moved her sword toward him.</p><p>
  <span class="u"><strong>Your fires are those of the Heaven and burn hot. Mine are those of the Great King, whose song is the song of ice and fire. I would welcome a trial of strength, boastful one, but not yet to us is it given.</strong> </span>
</p><p>With that the dragon flew, and as it did so, the Muspellir returned, unhindered. Behind them murmurs of awe greeted Fingolfin and Maedhros, and it was then that Maedhros knelt before Fingolfin, and with him the rest of the Noldor. In Aman, the title of High King had been Finwe's but in the direct power of Melkor Great-King, none had dared take the title past a point. Here in the colonies, in the harshness of Beleriand and near the gates of the crystalline hell of Varda Elentari, the title of High King held far greater prominence, and it was thus that in the wake of rescuing his nephew that Fingolfin and his house became the High Kings of all the Noldor, and the leader of all the armies of the war against the Great Enemy.</p><p>Accepting this with humility, Fingolfin bowed in turn to the kneeling Noldor, and nodded to the two Kings of Nogrod and Belegost.</p><p>Then his gaze turned behind him to the towering crystal palace and the power that sang from there, if far less intensely and with that droning bone-shaking power that lusted for blood and skulls and their fill of both, then back once more, where to his surprise Elu Thingol of Doriath nodded respectfully, a nod he accepted with some unease. As yet the secret of what precisely had burned when they had made landfall held, and for the time that it did......</p><p>He would use this time, this momentum, he would take the allies of the Naugrim, use the unified power of the Noldor and the Sindarin, and even in the wake of the thing that had fallen from the stars and commanded the power that hummed and thirsted for blood and skulls, they would humble the self-proclaimed Queen of the Known Universe, And Mandos, with his stoic and dark prophecy, would be defied.</p><p>With that, the Kings of the Free Peoples would gather together and begin to draw up their plans for what would become the Glorious Battle, the greatest victory in the Wars of Beleriand.</p><p>THE THRONEROOM OF ELENTARI:</p><p>Ilmare flinched, fearing the avaricious looks of the Star-Queen, or worse her wrath, yet she remained on the Throne in a regal posture, seemingly in deep thought, before her starlight-eyes turned squarely to Ilmare.</p><p>
  <em><strong>A dragon, near the spires of the Star-Mountains.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Ilmare nodded, stiffly.</p><p>
  <em><strong>My little decoration, he's....been freed, I suppose.</strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <strong>A hand less, it would seem, but....yes.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>The vermin that calls itself King will come here, it will raise what it fancies is a great army, and will seek to ring my fortress.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Varda Elentari looked around her at the other legions, the throngs of her Eldar.</p><p>They were able to best the dross with their weaponry of Aman, when the Moonrise gave them an.....advantage, a thing that should not have been. The Moon has risen, and so has treacherous Arien. Now, it will be a contest of strength, and those always boil down to weight of numbers, or at least they should. I will even be kind to the creatures, I will let them turn this throng of vermin into what they believe is an army, and then, O Ilmare, then I shall loose my Legions, and they shall kneel before the Starlight-Blooded.</p><p>She leaned forward, moving one of her long arms which brushed against Ilmare's cheek as she moved slightly, unable to resist the flinch, even when the starlight in her mistress's eyes intensified.</p><p>
  <em><strong>You flinch from me again, little star?</strong> </em>
</p><p>Ilmare glared.</p><p>
  <strong>Yes, my Queen.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>You should not do that, you know.</strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <strong>I know, my Queen.</strong>
</p><p>With that the Star-Queen simultaneously rose from her Throne and seemed to compress herself into a height only a head taller than Ilmare, and she grasped the other woman by her arm.</p><p>
  <strong><em>You will be punished for that defiance, my dear. I expect unconditional loyalty. Perhaps those years of independent command went to your head, mm little star?</em> </strong>
</p><p>She took Ilmare to the dungeons, and in that silent and austere palace of crystal the smell of singed flesh and of burning soul wafted through and with it the pained screams of Ilmare. The Eldar covered their heads and their ears, and even the other great lieutenants bowed their heads. Only Ilmare had remained in the fortress, her loyalty remained without question. Varda would merely harm her, not kill her. If any of them gave her the slightest reason to doubt them.....a low murmur and moan of despair echoed in the fortress, the recognition that in the service of the lost and the damned there is only suffering and the laughter of thirsting stars.</p><p>The next evening Ilmare returned, in a form akin to that of the Children, her back blackened as from a deadly heat, her face pale and her jaw set firmly, trembling in her limbs the only indication of the immense pain she felt. She knelt on both knees beside the throne, and the Star-Queen began to issue orders for the trial of strength to come. Six days for the Legions to form and to move to the left and the right gates, a portion of her strength only (for though the Eldar had life and multiplied after the manner of the children of Illuvatar Varda was loathe to disclose too much of her strength, lest the unthinkable be thought). Her hand stroked the blackened flesh of her great servant, and as Ilmare's face remained taught, her servants were marvels of obedience more total than anything she had ever seen or given in Aman.</p><p>The Star-Queen smiled. Perfect order, perfect precision, all in Heaven kneeling before her will and then obeying.</p><p>She closed her eyes, the smell of Ilmare's flesh burning and her soul charring further in her nostrils and she sighed, a decadent and a rich sound. Her eyes closed, she let herself briefly listen to the music of her spheres, and her flesh, while limited to an incarnate bodied form became the pure richness of her night sky and its beautiful chorus, the Music of the Spheres echoing in the palace, and with it all that was within worked the harder, spurred to greater efforts.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. From the proclamation of Fingolfin as High King to the onset of the War of Glory:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Fingolfin, now High King of the Noldor, builds the Fortifications of Fingolfin to contain the armies of the Star-Queen. Varda masses her legions, prepares mines beneath the Fortifications of Fingolfin to unmake them, and within two years each side deems itself ready for the great trial of strength.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>The most frequent complaint of old histories is that they tend to be histories of Kings and Battles. In the Red Book of Westmarch and its tales of the First Age, the most distant age, when Gods and Mortals met, this complaint has more than a degree of truth to it. Many were the songs the Quendi sang, and the stories told, of the long and bitter and hopeless war against the Star-Queen. Of the Wars of Beleriand the Dagor Aglareb, the Glorious Battle/War, the War of the Burning, and the War of Unnumbered Tears are told in the most detail. The first, as the greatest victory of the Free Peoples, and their only true and unconstrained victory against the full might of the Elentari. The second, when their armies were burned and their peoples laid waste. The third, following the treacherous hope spun from the great love and storied path of Beren Erchamion and Luthien Tinuviel, who went into the Star-Fortress and took a very Silmaril from the crown of the Queen herself, when the last hope of the Free peoples died and the stars sang in joy and the Time of Troubles came. With victory in its true sense as rare as it was, it is no great surprise that the glories of Fingolfin, King of Kings, who defeated the third great offensive of the Elentari in the reckoning of the Sindar, the second in the reckoning of the Noldor, tends to be that most heralded among the Elves.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>In the two years before the Dagor Agloreb, Fingolfin turned the full weight of his new Naugrim allies and the dexterity in the mechanic arts of his Noldor to the creation of what became known as the Fortifications of Fingolfin in the more clinical terms of later years, or the 'Lines of Fire' in the older and more poetic sense used by the Master in his translations of the First Age. The master's experiences in the bitterness of the Great War and the Somme may have explained at least part of what drew him so much more deeply to the First Age than to the adventures of the Holbytla Baggins clan, to a point that he dedicated most of his life to the translations he did and left only the very last of the task to his son. In his translation he refers to lines in a fashion akin to that of the Great War, though an appraisal of the Wars of Beleriand by General David Petraeus of the United States argues that there were a few crucial differences beyond the divinity and the literal monsters that were used to assault the lines.</p><p>The Quendi did invent, before anyone else, the concepts of firebays, traverses, the first versions of landmines, and interlocking fields of fire. They scarred the Earth deeply, to a point that when taken after the War of the Burning the servants of the Star-Queen merely redesigned the fortifications to face the opposite end and used them to deadly effect in the War of Wrath. They did not, for all that they are reported to use what in the hindsight of later years are clearly bolt-action rifles of quality finer than anything humanity has ever manufactured and massive parks of artillery, from mortars to howitzers, machine guns or what are recognizable equivalents. They relied on the finer elements of magic, a thing that is called this in the writings and notes of Mr. Baggins, the first translator, though both the Quendi and the view of Professor Tolkien is that magic is too simple and too erroneous a word for the Elves and their works.</p><p>A prototype of a device later used to fabulous effect in Westernesse, the Palantir, served as an equivalent ofbot  radios, permitting a near-invulnerable area of the lines, making it near-impossible for any kind of surprise. The lines of Fingolfin, chastened by the result of the pursuit of Feanor and Maedhros to the gate of Angband, were a comfortable distance away, that of two US gridiron fields, and as the two years passed, they became much deeper. The Elves do not appear to have developed any concept of concrete, though their allies the Dwarves were able to strengthen the lines such that only the power unleashed in the Burning could destroy them.</p><p>In the retrospect of the Burning, some four centuries after the Glorious Battle, it would come to be seen as a mistake that the Elves located all that they had brought with them of the machines of Aman so near to the lines. In the Glorious Battle and the smaller and more inglorious clashes of the Siege that for so long bar the fall of Tol Sirion and its transformation into Tol-ni-Muspelli, brought interminable battles that slew the armies of both sides without altering the lines one way or the other, this meant that the Elven lines were invulnerable in all save a singular case, marked by the direct intervention of the Hell-Queen, and by the question of why her offensive did not seem to be followed through, if offensive it was.</p><p>As the Elves labored and delved with the Dwarves and built a marvel of warfare that would permit them to raise their great kingdoms shielded by the troops in the Lines that could and would exchange their roles with the Deathless Elves and Millennium-aged Dwarves moving troops in and out of the lines at intervals no mortal force was capable of sustaining, Varda's fortress hummed and sang in its bloody songs, and there were impressions of great activities beneath. The irruption of a small force of Eldar from a tunnel between two traverses exposed the Star-Queen's scheme to simply undermine and destroy the fortifications with great and terrible equivalents of the gunpowder wielded by the Elves and the Dwarves, a horrid kind of fire akin to the Greek Fire or Napalm, almost like a magical variant of White Phosphorus that clung to the skin and instead of merely being content to burn the flesh, it scoured the soul. </p><p>Before the Glorious War, there was the inglorious and pitiless War of the Mines fought by the great soldiers of Nogrod and Belegost, where in the darkness of the Earth the Dwarves came into a much deeper and more intimate contact with the Star-Queen's dreadful light and the songs. In no case was Ilmare the Hell-Queen or another of the great leaders of the Great Enemy's forces present, which was taken as a sign of cowardice in later years while there is no deeper proof of what did and did not lie behind it. For two years the mines and counter-mines beneath the Lines of Fire echoed to the resounding booms of Dwarven weaponry and the shrieking howls of Eldar and the haunting melodies of star-song, but in the end, the Valour of the Khazad and their runes proved more than equal to the task, and the brutal, if seemingly passive, attacks were to meet their repulse.</p><p>Humanity would have, and indeed did during the days of the Siege, struggled with the kind of vigilance that came naturally to the Deathless and the Millennium-lived, for what was a term of service to a Quendi and a Dwarf was an entire lifespan to the Adunie and the Edain were not willing or capable to sustain it. Where human armies would have suffered boredom, the armies of the Elves and Dwarves, with Fingolfin commanding the center, Nogrod and Belegost the right, and the Sindar under the leadership of King Thingol of Doriath the left, labored and did so without complaint. It was also its own incentive that the one time that the Elves and Dwarves did relax their guard, in the mid point of the first year, one of the more cunning raids of the Eldar struck without warning from one of the mines, launching a second assault directly into the trench, leaving only the severed heads of the Elven and Dwarven guards.</p><p>From that point, the warning to underestimate the foe and the memory of the severed heads with their eyes and tongues torn out was its own incentive.</p><p>ELDABAND, THE DAY BEFORE THE  DAGOR AGLAREB: </p><p>Ilmare knelt beside the Star-Queen's throne, her back healing from another of the Star-Queen's vindictive assaults on her for an imagined slight. It was true that Ilmare had questioned the wisdom of allowing their foes the full chances to raise such terrible fortifications, of squandering strength in furtive assaults against the lines beneath that were not in sufficient quantity to break into them but in just sufficient quantity to get the foe prepared. She had said that bluntly the day prior and the Elentari had taken her to the chamber once more and the star-flame had burned into her and sang with its power, more of the old Ilmare burned away in the most literal sense and the Utumnonatari, Sinmara of the Muspelli, rose in her stead. Ilmare, once the most shining and beautiful of the Maia and sharing with her brother Olorin what would have been affiliation with the Star-Queen herself, before Olorin turned against them, was receding in the wake of such flame. The part of her that had once been good was dying, and not dying a quick death, but a slow and lingering one, the sadistic impulses of her vengeful Queen seeking outlets as she willed herself to focus her armies to strike.</p><p>Even with the lines, and with the other weaknesses, Ilmare believed a true strike with the full weight of their power might have snapped the line, given the forces and the formations the Star-Queen had hatched on her own. Her Queen might show signs of starting to slip into madness, but she was no fool even for that. But the Star-Queen did not wish this, even with her Eldar replenishing their ranks and true-Eldar adding another five thousand since the start of the wars under the starlight and its song.</p><p>Her back was carbonized and wept the gleaming blood of her thought-form, and the sight of her Queen's most powerful lieutenant humbled thus meant that the one entrusted with this strike, the Balrog-lord, was scrupulously obedient down to the last detail.</p><p>The singing of the starlight that shifted with each motion of the Star-Queen's hands continued to resonate as her hands caressed Ilmare in that mockery of affection, that sublimated desire for the Wind-Lord and where Varda's sadism, that power that had made countless horrors that sang for blood and chafed at even partial limits to what it could do in one place kept finding ways to out. She hoped that even if the lines did not break that there would be captives.</p><p>The sight of a few broken bodies of Eldar, the flesh charred and the souls' last whimpers still echoing from when the Star-Queen had struck them with a blast with a sinister laugh was a reminder to that. Her Mistress would need a harvest of captives, if not from the lines, from elsewhere. And....some part of her ached to be the one giving more of the torments for a change, rather than merely being the one that suffered them, and dreamed of what fire and the glory and beauty of star-song would work on the Edain that were carving their way north or on the will of the Elves.</p><p>The last of the Legions reached their jumping-off points, Gothmog flying in to bow before them and to note that the offensive was ready.</p><p>The Star-Queen remained silent, her hand brushing from the Hell-Queen's hair down the un-ravaged flesh of the back of her neck to stop on the charred shoulder, digging in slightly where a wound that had just healed broke back open, Ilmare's face carefully stilled. For a time she stared seemingly into space and said nothing, and then she moved and looked straight at Gothmog, who could not help but flinch when her seeming stillness bar that one hand moved in a speed that matched that of the singing chorus of the stars themselves. </p><p>
  <em><strong>Good, Lieutenant.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her gaze remained squarely upon him.</p><p>
  <em><strong>You too, flinched. When I moved. Have you learned nothing from her fate, Fire-King?</strong> </em>
</p><p>Gothmog bowed his head and sought to plead for pardon but a ball of star-flame collided against his cheek and he endured the rebuke, stalking off, his face bubbling and giving him wounds not unlike those that would afflict the second Gothmog and did much to give him the name upon his birth in the Third Age.</p><p>As the armies were ready, her voice echoed in the mind of the Hell-Queen:</p><p>
  <strong><em>Now you do not flinch, my good and faithful servant. Even when my hands traverse those wounds of yours. Do you really think that these vermin could hold against Gothmog's legions?</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>It is not an act of wisdom in war to let the enemy prepare at leisure and to know you are coming, Queen of the Known Universe.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>They are vermin, Ilmare. The detritus of my Father's plans. Little shards of the Music that fancy themselves the equal of we, the Ainur, who made this world and that which rings and sings. </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>Ilmare remained silent then, and then the trumpets echoed from the gates of Eldaband and the gates flung open on the far left and the far right, and from them burst legions of of the Eldar, moving in swift columns that formed tightly packed lines, arms linking together and their shouts and battle-cries in perfect harmony with the melody from the great fortress..</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Glorious War, the beginning of the Great Siege, and the Partition of Beleriand:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Dagor Agloreb, and the creation and division of Beleriand among the kingdoms of the Noldor, the Sindar, and Eol of the Avari.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Of the Dagor Aglareb itself, the Quendi have made much in story and song. The legions of the Star-Queen that emerged from two of the gates, arm in arm, shrieking in the Chorus of the Damned. The first sight in the light of the Sun of the great hordes of the Eldar, and of what the Starlight could do to the flesh given the creative wills of the Hell-Queen and the Elentari behind them. The artificial thunder and rippling lightning of the weaponry of the Elves and the Dwarves, and the horror of realizing that the monsters glimpsed only partially in the light of the stars, for the starlight is unholy and its song conceals much, even as it reveals other things, were of origin Quendi, in turn. It is said that this horror stilled the weaponry at first, for a great silence followed, and an awareness of the fate that risked if the lines should break and the Legions storm them. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>While it is said that the Elentari hated the Sun, she who built the howling singing stars designed her servants that even a Daystar that shown with its brilliant golden light and brought forth life was no more than annoyance, a thing that pained them and motivated them to great frenzies. Jotnar did shun the Daystar, which turned them to stone if they were caught beneath its pitiless gaze, and other creatures of the Star-Queen trembled beneath the holy rays of Arien as life did where the clouds broke or were broken, and the terrible hell-chorus of the star-song and the gleaming hunger of that countless legion of monsters made by the Elentari gazed upon them unhindered. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yet the Eldar, in all their legions, never feared the Sun, and were accounted among the most valorous of the servants of the Enemy, for they viewed the creation of the Daystar as a confession of weakness, that even the foes of the Star-Queen had to make a star of their own to counter her. These things would be learned in the long and bitter days to come in the small and squalid clashes of the Siege, where Eldar were taken prisoner, and where the cruel deeds of those who put them to the question learned of how and in what ways the Great Enemy taught her servants. </em>
</p><p><em>Yet in the beginning, the Lines of Fire were where Eldar and Quendi met, not in swift and deadly exchanges and the burning of corpses in the wake of battlefields, but with full sight of what each was to the other. Even in the wake of so smashing a victory, the Eldar had been things of mystery and contempt from the battles under the stars in the eyes and in the gaze of the stoic and warlike Sindar who had come to hardiness  and strength under the starlight and alone among the Elves could endure open skies without star-madness. Yet even the Sindar who had learned the swift and brutal and total exercise of war for the first time began to view the Eldar with fear.</em>-<em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE LINES OF FIRE:</p><p>The first sign that the confrontation that had awaited for two years, and had up to this point been a thing of small and furtive raids into weak points in the line, and the bitter and savage Battle of the Mines, where the power of Starlight at work within the Eldar had given the Dwarves their first deeper awareness of it and induced what was Star-Madness in other kinds that dwelt within Arda. Where to the it was fear, to the Dwarves it was a fatalistic rage that led them to fight to their own destruction, valor spent in folly but valor all the same, was when the trumpts of Angband echoed in a singular blast. Their sound was in the same melody as star-song, a singular note that echoed and re-echoed in the tune of the warbling mad laughter of the Star-Queen.</p><p>The great gates opened, pulled with rumbling sonorous sounds akin to those horns used by ships that sailed the foggy seas of the north and points of the coastline, and from them moved in the sunlight the Eldar, seen in full for the first time even by the Sindarin. Before there had been impressions of things of vaguely Elven nature, taller and swollen, eyes flaming with starlight, and blood that seemed to glow in veins. In the War under the Stars, still greater deformities, uneven limbs, some more greatly swollen than the others, things that moved on knuckles in loping strides and wielded strange weapons that were wielded with awesome strength, but clumsily.</p><p>Now.....now there were creatures that wore partial armor, breastplates that connected to semicircular pauldrons that flared out, a kind of metallic skirt, and greaves on the calves and the arms, though these creatures only had the commanders wearing helms.* Their eyes, in or out of the helms, gleamed with a singing light, only the pupils and the irises reflecting two different kinds of that light. For the first time in unity, countless voices of the Eldar bellowed:</p><p>
  <em>A Elbereth, Githoniel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>silivren penna miriel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>O menel aglar Elgenath!</em>
</p><p>Before they had come in silence or in shrieking animalistic bellows in eerie tune with star-song, but now they spoke in a perfect unity, repeating the litany again and again, in an almost mindless fashion. Such was the power of the images of the columns forming six great lines of battles in perfection of motion in a rationality that defied the understanding of all that had passed that the gleaming-eyed light-blooded creatures, who first earned from their eyes of fire and the blood that gave their skin a visible kind of glow a name that would endure in different forms. Calaquendi, or as the Norse would call them, the Ljossalfar, those menacing creatures of light that came to ravish and to ruin the lives and homes of mortals. </p><p>The Lines had been built to fire and strike down armies before they could move, yet the armies of Varda were within open sights when the sons of Feanor in charge of the artillery shouted the order to "Fire over open sights" , and with the thunder of the cannon-fire the first line saw ragged holes torn in it, the armor of the Eldar shattered and the creatures falling with reactions ranging from almost a whimper of relief to bellowed shrieking rage. Where it did not strike directly some were thrown into the air but raised themselves up, raising swords in turn and seeking to strike directly into the line when the first of the forces of Fingolfin rose and fired a volley quite literally in their faces.</p><p>With that the horrifying specter of the Eldar for the Quendi dispelled enough that the firepower began to ring out, even as the flying form of Gothmog sought to attack directly at the cannons. Prepared for just this, Caranthir and Curufin had prepared a powerful singing music that diverted the forces of the shells to strike Gothmog directly, the weight hurling the monster back over his armies.</p><p>The butchery was a work of hours, and of attacks by Gothmog on each of the groupings of cannon that met with the same fate, before the monster snarled and resumed its place behind its legions, spurring them to further attacks.</p><p>Three lines moved in perfect discipline, and died in that fashion. The fourth sought to break and run, only to see Gothmog behind it hewing his way through those who sought to run, and from there no further yielding of the Eldar to self-preservation happened, and it was with fatalistic fury that they continued to hurl themselves at the lines.</p><p>In two places, the sheer weight of Eldar corpses stacked enough that Eldar dropped down from them within the trenches, and here the shining star-swords of Varda, unhallowed things that gleamed with starlight and seemed to quite literally drink in the souls. Here, the fighting reached a peak of ferocity and in the first, nearer the person of Fingolfin himself and where he directed the armies, the first line snapped beneath the ferocious and even suicidal frenzies of the Eldar, who surged through it toward the second line, and toward the person of Fingolfin himself.</p><p>Unsheathing a sword that still gleamed with the power of Aman, Fingolfin dispatched twelve of the Eldar in twelve blows, and the rest turned and fled from him, hunted down in a long and unpleasant process, the only enduring element of the enemy's power left when the guns fell silent, and the last of the Eldar were massacred.</p><p>Six hours had lapsed, and in the wake of the technology of Aman, another of the gifts of Feanor to his people and to the vision of his war, save in two spots not a single of the hordes of Eldaband had even reached the lines, and the Quendi chose to neglect what had happened when some of them had and it had come to a trial of strength. As awareness of the victory grew, a great cheer crossed the line from one end to the other.</p><p>
  <em>Fingolfin! Fingolfin! Fingolfin!</em>
</p><p>In a counter to the</p><p>
  <em>A Elbereth, Githoniel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>silivren penna miriel</em>
</p><p>
  <em>O menel aglar Elgenath!</em>
</p><p>of the last defiant, and wounded, not-yet corpses of the Eldar, the shouting of the Quendi and even the Naugrim of the name of the High King. </p><p>With this, Fingolfin began to distribute lands and titles, the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost becoming the Kings of the East, retaining not merely their vast mountain strongholds, each only a small shade of lesser size than that of Khazad-Dum in its glory, but the right to all territory in the Ered Luin, also known to the Quendi as the Naugorodrim. To them was given the Eastern marches, and in this vast sphere they retained the power of forges that would permit them in the wake of the Burning to come through best of any of the Free Peoples, and indeed to offer shelter to the shattered realms of Maglor and Maedhros, to the southeast of Doriath.</p><p>Doriath itself was the mightiest of all the Elven Kingdoms of Beleriand, the wonder of that age. Shielded by Melian's girdle from the sight of Ilmare and from the sight even of Varda's stars, as well as that of Ungoliant, who thirsted and hungered for the light of Melian but would never penetrate the Girdle so long as it endured, it was the wonder of the First Age, even by the standards of Nargothrond and Gondolin, the other great Elven Kingdoms. It sprawled the heart of Beleriand, a region that in the eyes of modern humanity is equivalent to the size of all Western Europe, or the European territories of the former Soviet Union. The heart of the kingdom was within the forest and the Girdle. To its direct east was the shadowy Nan Dungortheb, a realm of monsters and utter horror that the foolish and the suicidal ventured to, but in its own way shielded from the soul-hungry light of the stars.</p><p>Only Doriath was a realm above the ground, though it had its own vast underground fortifications, those of the Menegroth, from where in the wake of the breaking of the Girdle and the passing of Elu Thingol the remnants of the kingdom would remain the mightiest Eldar force at war against the victorious legions of Varda.</p><p>Hithlum became the sphere of Caranthir and Curufin, who ruled it as a Diarchy and less as a kingdom and more as a blend of march-lordship and Ghazi Emirate. Few were the things of peace in that realm of the sons of Feanor, but manifold were the things of War.</p><p>Celegorm and Amras, the Lords of the Diarchy of Himlad, ruled a realm still more dedicated to war. It was said of Himlad that it was an army with a kingdom, and not in the reverse.</p><p>The House of Finarfin ruled the realm of Nargothrond, a broader term connecting the central city with various appanages. Nargothrond's northernmost extremity was the small principality of Tol Sirion, the most distant of the Finarfin holdings. Fingolfin, as High King, and his family, ruled directly in Nevrast, but commanded the absolute loyalty of all other Quendi, taking to himself and to his sons the smallest realms, believing that the power to command all the armies of all the kingdoms meant a larger realm for his dynasty might create trouble, especially with the uncertain loyalty of the sons of Feanor, who even after Maedhros had passed on the claim, were not fully trusted.</p><p>It did not help that in the wake of the Glorious Battle Artanis, the sole daughter of the House of Finarfin to dwell within Doriath, revealed the truth of the massacre at Alaquonde, following a drunken revel that had seen her burst into tears and seem to shout at invisible foes and wield an invisible sword in the protection of the King's brother in Aman. From that point was sown the second of the great evils of the oath, for Doriath remained loyal to the League of Fingolfin through the Siege, but forbid the use of Quenya within its borders, and bar Galadriel, who alone of the House of Finarfin had fought on the side of the Teleri and was thus held guiltless, none of the Houses of Feanor, Fingolfin, or Finarfin were welcome among the princes save as those more than guests.</p><p>Melian the Maia-Queen, it is said, took Galadriel to her company in the wake of the 'Clash of the Phantom Sword', and sought to give her healing from the strange nightmares and things that would harm her. To those humans of modern times, it is clear that at least one of the Quendi suffered something akin to post-traumatic stress, though its incidence, bar perhaps elements of the tales of Tuor and Idril and Turin Turambar, it is not so clearly attested. Though Melian taught Galadriel deeply and helped to shape Artanis into the towering figure of the Second and Third Ages, the nightmares and flashbacks never truly ceased, and the losses of her family that would leave Galadriel the last of her kin alive into the Third Age seemed to worsen them.</p><p>Perhaps the sight of so powerful and proud a figure as the Man-Maiden having the nightmares at the unpredictable intervals of their occurrence, or other things, for the heart of humanity is impossible to ever truly decipher and how much moreso the works of the Deathless and the mentality of the Quendi who never truly died, only vanished into Valinor once it was hidden and seemingly removed from the Earth altogether following the Downfall of Westernesse, for there may have been other things besides, and her seeming to have them stilled only in the presence of a being with the improbable name Teleporno*, who for obvious reasons Professor Tolkien rendered as Celeborn, accounted for their contentment in marriage, and for its unusual elements in having but two children, fewer than usual among the Quendi, a son, named Amroth after the son of Feanor who froze to death in the Helcaraxe, and a daughter, Celebrian, whose life would have misfortunes of its own.</p><p>Where Galadriel lived in the occluded and protected realm of Doriath, and Turgon son of Fingolfin alone seemed to vanish to parts unknown, there to build the hidden enclave of Gondolin, shielded by Melkor's dragons and the wards of Ulmo. It was said when Turgon came to the region where Gondolin would arise that Ulmo, Lord of the Deep, rose and spoke to him a prophecy that from Gondolin would come the mightiest of all Mariners, a figure who alone could venture to Aman even amongst the ban of the Valar. With so weighty a task as the future of all Quendi at his means, Turgon made his realm a paradise, unspoiled by war until the last, during the time of the Third Kinslaying and the treachery of Maeglin, son of the Dark Elf.</p><p>The Dark Elf himself was the singular Avari, one of the last of this group of Quendi, who were hardier and more warlike than the Sindar of Beleriand (and the future Sindar of Eregion and the southern realms of the Second and Third Ages were as hardy and powerful as their ancestors, for none could dwell in Middle Earth where the skies could and did clear and the stars sing down without becoming stern and hardy and warlike folk). As they were still more warlike and inured to clashes with the Eldar and not awakened to horror by the battle under the sun as to their nature, they became beings consumed near totally by war, the closest kin among the Quendi to the very Eldar themselves.</p><p>Indeed, it is said that they had warred themselves to virtual extinction, and that of all the Svartalfar, or the Dark Elves, there was but Eol himself in his Forest of Shadow, a small enclave between the western frontier of Doriath and the eastern of the southern edges of the broader kingdom-complex of Nargothrond and its appanages. There he would dwell alone, until star-madness, it is said, or perhaps another force, a wanderlust that was reckless and foolish, overcame Aredhel of Gondolin and she ventured out to Nevrast, there to be taken to wife by force by the Dark Elf, a union that sowed its own darkness and misery for the Quendi to rival that of the Oath.</p><p>To the south, only rumors came of the great realms like Khazad Dum, and the Khanate of Euskra, the major Easterling realm, that would endure in different shapes. It is not clear the Khanate of Euskra is truly connected to the Euskera, or Basques, of Spain, and indeed it is speculated that it is not, largely because the pre-Indo-European cultures of the Hyborean Age had other cognates like Vanir, Stygians, Cimmeria, and Acheron. In the tales and songs of the House of Durin, the fell light of the Star-Queen was well known to the south, and long and bitter wars were fought against legions that were sent to the south in tales unknown and unsung until Khazad-Dum and its glories became known to the last of the Feanorians, Celebrimbor, of later renown and infamy in his own right.</p><p>To the south also came the first tales of the entities that would become known as the Lords of Irem, itself the last trace of a once-mighty kingdom of the Hyborean Age known as Valusia, the rival of the Empire of Acheron, and its ultimate overthrower, and the greatest power of the age of Conan, who it is said appeared following an event to the south known as the 'strange star-fall,' when great things like streaks of burning metal came to the ground and then, after a time, a city of the serpent-creatures, very primitive and crude by lesser standards, arose.</p><p>The Star-Queen it is said came from the stars and brought her images with her, but if the Valusians did come from the star-fall, they were inflexible and powerful enemies of the servants of the Star-Queen, and among her greatest foes to the south. These tales were distant and in the days of the Siege, where Nargothrond, Nevrast, the smaller principalities, and Doriath reached their flowering, they were in any event mere curiosities held to be fever dreams of distant travelers who had slept in open skies too many nights and had their brains scrambled by star-song.</p><p>The Siege, mostly, was marked by occasional larger and smaller sallies that were ferociously fought, but unnamed and unnumbered, an attrition that wormed its way into the armies of the Free People, bar the singular time when Tol Sirion fell and became Tor Ni Muspelli, but one where the lines held and only those troops who served in them, rotated among all the kingdoms and the centuries of the bitterness of the Siege likewise, and for all that ferocity of the countless skirmishes, some worthy to have been among the Great Battles and renowned for heroism......it was still the glory days of the First Age, when the Star-Queen seemed hemmed in by the might of the Lines of Fire and the Noldor reached a height of glory they would never know again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>*The armor of the Eldar is patterned roughly after the Lorica Segmata of the Roman Legions.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. A recounting of the Siege of Angband from the beginning to the prelude to the War of the Burning:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A brief recounting of the major skirmishes of the Siege of Angband proper, of the fall of Tol Sirion to Ilmare Hell-Queen, and of the more memorable clashes between the Great Enemy and the Free Peoples. And among these incidents, the Halethian tribe of humanity becomes the first humans known to the sons of Feanor and their visiting marcher-lord, Finrod Felagund.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>While most of the skirmishes of the Siege were noted in the various annals preserved in the Red Book in singular sentences, there are seven clashes in those four hundred years that stand out. For the first century and a half, clashes were infrequent, sudden and dramatic irruptions of armies that bellowed the 'Elbereth Githoniel' war chant, and came on in the same way as the Glorious Battle and were seen off thus. Indeed, there became apparent a rhythm that on nights where cloud cover was at its weakest and the music of the spheres went from lower droning echoed in the spires of the Eldorodrim to the wailing howls of the damned that the next morning the armies of Varda would move in interlocked arms, bellowing and shrieking. This first century and a half was one of easy victories, easily won. The first of the seven clashes to be preserved in memory was the singular greatest defeat of the Quendi in the days of the Siege, before the Burning. The fall of Tol Sirion.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman</p><p>TOL SIRION, YEAR 150 OF THE SIEGE:</p><p>Orodreth, lord of the northernmost appanage of Nargothrond, had known something was wrong when a cloudless night had scourged his realm and yet there were no nightmare-screams, only the usual wailing of the stars for blood and skulls that could be ignored with the exercises taught by the Sindar, exercises that he and his family took more seriously even than most of his siblings, let alone the proud lords of the Houses of Feanor and Fingolfin. That silence, and that gap in the predictable patterns when the throngs of the Star-Eyed linked arms and bellowed "<em>A Elbereth, Githoniel</em>!" and charged the ranks and seemed to try to hew down Minas Tirih in madness, had him suspicious. The enemy should not be smart enough to learn from its mistakes.</p><p>The dawn rose, the Daystar's warm light always a thing of welcome, for even if its rising portended the coming of the Engwar, eventually, a singular star that was not prone to howl and wail for the souls of all life, and a star no less than the work, some said even the person, of Arien the Queen of the Valar, was a thing of wonder and reverence for the Elves The dawn-welcome echoed in its litany, and then there was silence, silence from the singing palace. Silence....and then the tramping of one pare of boots and the molten heat-shimmer of the coming of the Muspelli. Since the first appearance of these fearsome warriors, the Utumnotari, the Hell-Queen, was the one of the Great Enemy's warriors most feared and watched for.</p><p>Golden armor reflected the glare of the sun and within the helm of that plate armor like a more elaborate and concealing variant of that worn by the legions of the Eldar was a being whose body hummed and echoed with the blood-hungry star-chorus. In her left gauntlet there was a sword that shimmered with star-flame and sang a song of treachery and of blood, a shield adorned with star-runes on her right arm.</p><p>The other forces moved in bellowing praise of the Star-Queen, but the creatures known in the Star-Tongue* as the Muspelli, the World-Destroyers, always came in silence. The Utumno-tari, the Hell-Queen, and six Balrogs, great lords among their kind. Giants of fire that would not come to grind bones and drink blood but merely to burn and ravage. Quietly he sent orders that his pregnant wife be sent to the south, to the outposts of Hithlum, while he would seek to defy the unstoppable.</p><p>With that departure, done in secret, as the war-horns of Tol Sirion blared, the movement of the Muspelli did not intensify nor speed up, they simply marched in silence until the Hell-Queen stood at the outer gates of Minas Tirith, the starlight that gleamed from her holding Elves in spellbound raptness. Exercises might contain the night-song, but in the presence of the Hell-Queen, the power could not be fully stilled, as she stood and looked up.</p><p>Depart, Beggar-king, and be gone.</p><p>"This is the fortress entrusted to me by the High King of the Noldor. Only death or conquest shall take it from me."</p><p>As you have said, so then shall it be.</p><p>With that she raised her sword that gleamed with eldritch fire, the flame gathering around it and the star-drone reaching a point the very material of the tower itself trembled, and then she brought it down and a column of star-flame slammed into the tower. The star-flame ate hungrily, burning into the very rock itself, the wards of Naugrim and Aman-make burned away at a stroke, a singular display of power that brought a satisfied smile to the Hell-Queen's face, before she took the next steps to its gates. Sheathing her sword and placing her shield upon her back, she struck the door with what was more blow than knock, the unnatural strength that was hers by the star-woven armor given her by her mistress moving to batter the door in as if it was nothing. From there she raised the sword out of the scabbard and returned it to flame, her face briefly akin to a pale but still glowing scion of the Quendi, a savage smile on her face.</p><p>By conquest or by death, she mocked, and then the sword began its work and the Balrogs climbed up the tower like great monsters, in work swift and brutal and gilded with star-flame did Tol Sirion fall. Alone among its defenders did Orodreth himself remain, and in defiance he raised his sword toward Ilmare, who again donned an appearance more akin to that of the Children of Illuvatar, neither Man nor Elf but somewhere in between. Her smile was as savage as it had been before her sword left broke and cauterized and charred bodies in its wake, and she gave him a mockingly respectful nod.</p><p>Orodreth sought to fight that which no mortal nor deathless could fight, but the molten star-flame of her sword casually sheared his own in twain, not even bothering to wield her shield in a fashion a swordsman of a more direct sort would. He stared at the broken element of his sword and then slumped in despair.</p><p>You fought valiantly, and so did your men. My Muspelli are the elite of the Empress of the Known Universe. Consider sending me her own salute to you, Orodreth of the armies slain.</p><p>With that, the glare of her eyes grew in hue and he found himself staring blankly into it and would awaken in a field, shorn of armor and of clothing, save the melted remnants of both, with what was evidently the passing of four days hence, rescued by the lords of Hithlum, who uniquely for sons of Feanor spoke to a prince of the Finarfins with respect. Clad anew, he returned to Nargothrond despondent, only to find his brother brooding on a prophetic dream of some import, and entrusted with a great kingdom as his reward for the loss of the smallest appanage.</p><p>With no more than soft murmurs of dreams, Finrod Felagund departed himself to seek to speak to his sister in Doriath, an exchange brief yet permitted even with the hostility of Thingol. It was here that the famous exchange of couplets over Felagund living like a ranger when a prince and his response that a prince with neither home nor grave to call his own would be a ranger in truth between them preserved in Elven lore occurred.</p><p>The fall of Tol Sirion jolted the armies out of their complacency, as the very western and northernmost portion of their line had been overthrown in a single stroke by the Hell-Queen. Yet Ilmare made no effort to press her offensive, nor even to contest those forces that created a second line to ring them. If anything, the way she remade Minas Tirith into Tor Ni Muspelli, no longer an island but a towering citadel in an alkali lakebed seemed to reflect a kind of relief to be parted from her mistress and no willingness to return to her</p><p>The second of the memorable clashes followed this transformation, when the lords of Hithlum led personally a strike to reclaim the new Isle of the World Destroyers, only to find their armies routed and considering themselves lucky to escape with their lives and what to modern science would be third degree burns over parts of their body, and most of the forces sent with them annihilated in what was not a clash of firearms and firepower but the roiling heat of the Balrogs and the star-flame of Ilmare returning the favor of strikes at a distance with interest.</p><p>With the Second Battle of Tol Sirion as dismal a failure for the arms of the Quendi as the first had been, the potential sneering of the Feanorians was tamed, in a paradoxical sense of blessing, and the collapse of that westernmost fringe seemed content to stay there.</p><p>Fingolfin would remain ever focused in his designs upon the west, a focus of the Star-Queen's design that would rebound to her advantage, and which would become deliberately weighed into the events of the Burning.</p><p>THE WAR OF THE LINES OF FIRE:</p><p>In the wake of the two Battles of Tol Sirion, the first regular incursions from Angband began. Throngs of star-flame-eyed Eldar that shrieked and howled in the more frenzied cases and echoed with the dreaded:</p><p><em>A Elbereth Githoniel!</em> that heralded the more disciplined assaults would emerge in now lesser and now greater strength to contest the lines. It seemed almost as if the Star-Queen was experimenting with different tactics, given the first assault came on in dense columns and in what the Quendi called the Quarter-Hour Battle a simple set of artillery fire leveled this attack before it had seemingly even started. It was also the smallest of all the assaults launched.</p><p>Experimental formations were wielded, most failures and often failing where they were the most densely crowded, where the artillery of Aman reaped its deadly harvest. Indeed, most of these battles were directly won by the artillery with minimal roles for the foot soldiers beyond jeering their foes in their advances and jeering harder in their retreats. Efforts at more complex mixtures and progressively looser formations, now thicker and now thinner lines followed.</p><p>From clashes that had been from between a half-year to every three years in the first century and a half, to ones that occurred in progressively more regular forms, to a point that the discipline of the armies in the lines began to measurably tighten and the service for prolonged eras even with immortals seemed to take its tolls. The looser formations and those that began to adapt maneuver, some seeming to fall and others to rise and spread out around them meant for the first time not merely a few of the most fanatical, but much larger forces of Varda's Eldar began to reach the lines, and what had been largely lopsided battles decided by artillery and sometimes by both artillery and volleys of rifles became the more deadly and desperate work of bladed weapons, bayonets against the star-swords.</p><p>From times when but a few dozen might perish from incaution and ill-luck, the tolls in battles that left no outward changes in lines but began to take steeper tolls of the Elven kingdoms began to intensify. The men of the kingdoms slowly seemed to vanish into lines, and the Quendi, who could be slain in the field, began to experience the kind of sorrow that comes to the Deathless who do not die of age but die of other sorrows.</p><p>Had Fingolfin become less focused on stationing his best troops near Tor Ni Muspelli, even then, the clashes would have been less grievous with fewer deaths, and deaths that would have touched fewer realms. Yet the seizure of the singular island remade into the blasted heath reaped rewards all out of proportion to the seeming smallness of the victory. None among the Quendi would have been relieved to realize that this, a decision of the Hell-Queen that she had cajoled the Star-Queen into granting, had led the Star-Queen to see the wisdom of her greatest lieutenant and her best general and to adjust her methods accordingly.</p><p>For all that, the lines held, though one gamble of Thuringwethil, she of those entities called the Night-Gaunts, flying creatures with bellies that gleamed with the singing horror of starlight, to seek to flank the lines via a larger take on the concept of the War of the Mines met failure, unexpected and unanticipated.</p><p>The Lords of Himlad had learned of a massive column of Eldar that had sought to take their kingdom from its unshielded east, a column that had threatened to outflank the entire line. Yet the column with such a vast advantage relative to its foes, had singularly failed to follow through on it, or with it. Indeed, it seemed to be troubled by foes unknown from its own south, and in the eyes of the Halethians, the first of the Edain and of all humanity to come into the pages of the Red Book, the Feanorians had sought to leave them to die deliberately and out of malice. At least officially, the Feanorians had not trusted a new foe of the Star-Queen would be a potential friend to the Free Peoples merely by opposing her evil.</p><p>When the clamour stilled, a group of swarthy and dark-haired individuals, stouter and shorter than the Elves but more powerfully built, remained thronged by a vast field of corpses. Indeed, to the Edain, this battle was known precisely by that designation, the Battle of the Field of Blood, and their chieftain, Haleth, who had come with her husband whose name does not enter into these tales, had seen her husband slain, and in the course of the two days and two nights beneath the howling stars not only won the loyalty of her people, but her name became theirs.</p><p>In this, the first meeting of Elves and humanity, the sons of Feanor were joined by the intinerant warrior-prince Finrod Felagund, and it was said that the Elves who rode forth on white horses saw a sour and scarred woman with dark eyes who glared at them with an anger that gave them pause.</p><p>Adunaic at this point was a tongue unknown, but a kind of crude Dwarvish was used to communicate, as the woman spoke:</p><p>"Well, we didn't die the way you were hoping, my lords." The last word in Khazad was the most bitter and scathing phrasing that the Sons of Feanor had ever heard thus far aimed at them.</p><p>"You have fought valiantly, and with honor" spoke Caranthir. "Will you not become auxiliaries of our kingdom? The Kingdom of Himlad could use such stouty warriors as your kind."</p><p>Haleth's gaze was still more sour to a point that if glares could kill, the mercy of Varda would have been kinder.</p><p>It is said that it is here that the Elves first learned the meaning of the crude term for fornication used as profanity in the coarsest of dwarf tongues, and the gaping mouths of the Feanorians at being told:</p><p>"Go fuck yourselves" meant that Haleth and the Halethians of the three tribes of the Edain would ever be held in the greatest wariness and respect by the sons of Feanor. No Edain would settle on lands ruled by that family, the Halethians traversing as far as Dor-Lomin, where they would build the first of the human kingdoms known, taking very readily to Elven firearms, and to other such technology gifted them.</p><p>The Beorians and the Hadorians, then a mingled confederation of two peoples under Beor and Hador, encountered the Quendi further south, at the fringes of the Girdle of Melian, where Maedhros, Marcher-Lord of the South, greeted them with more respect, but such was the haunted element of his gaze and the leathery effect on his skin of exposure to the star-song and the crystal palace that the far larger hordes of the Hadorobeorians simply passed through that land and in a longer route that near circled the element of the vast kingdom of Doriath moved to the east of the realm of Dor-Lomin, where they would eventually become the overlords of the realm following the Burning, as the Halethians abandoned their initial kingdom for the Forest-Kingdom of Brethil, where they would endure in a remnant until the coming of the War of Wrath, the only of the human tribes to remain intact.</p><p>In that passage around the kingdom, a smaller portion of the Hadorians would separate themselves, and retained their independence to build the most obscure of the kingdoms, the Kingdom of Beor, with its capital city Beorn. The surmising that some of the Beornings of this city would become by some strange alchemy the most famous of the Skin-Changers. The origin of this most secret and magical of all the subsets of Humanity, the closest to truth of the old legends of werewolves (and in truth were-bears, which would be still more terrifying and indeed were) has been lost to the disinterest of the chroniclers of the earlier Ages, and their Elven-centric focus.</p><p>With the arrival of Men, and the first fighting with the Halethians of the First Kingdom of Dor-Lomin against a small incursion of Eldar that passed from the Island of the World-Destroyers, Men were welcomed into the ranks of the Free Peoples.</p><p>It was not long after their appearance in the three hundred and seventieth year of the Siege, that things began to change, and to change greatly. All feared the irruption of the foe from the West, and so the very best and mightiest of the Halethians and even forces of Nogrod and Belegost began to join the forces that built up there, though none could have predicted the totality of the Burning nor how and in what way the collapse of the Siege would occur.</p><p>From the arrival of the first humans to the War of the Burning, the Dagor Bragollach, was so swift a moment in time that it was held among humanity that the death of the elderly and venerable Haleth had been the sign the foe was waiting for. This myth, while cherished strongly, appears to be entirely without foundation.</p><p>During that thirty years, Finrod Felagund became the Friend of Men, and it is from him that so much of the earliest Elven lore known to humanity became known, and it was in imitation of his itinerant ways that the Halethians became the Foresters of Brethil.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Of Eol, Aredhel, and the Avari:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A brief tale from the age of the Great Siege.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning: This story uses an older take on Eol the Dark-Elf and Aredhel,</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Eol the Avari shares with Mim the Petty-Dwarf the dubious distinction along with such figures of history as Lonesome George and Ishi of the Yahi of being the very last of a people, or a culture, and perhaps in some ways a species. The Avari were those Quendi who not only never went to Aman, but lived in the furthest north closest to the realm that they gave one of their most enduring legacies in the history and culture of the Quendi therein. Angband was a slightly modified variant of the Avari Angavando, a name that meant 'Iron Hell', for the association of Iron with the Avari was with a thing of great evil. When Varda had come from the stars and brought her images with her, she brought in her wake the equivalent of major meteor strikes that fell from the sky and were forgotten until the awakening of the Avari. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The metal they termed Galvorn had a power to shield them against the wiles of the Star-Queen and in her absence, the Hell-Queen. Many of the Avari became the first of the breeding stock for the Eldar, but those who did not became by necessity the very most savage and warlike of all the Quendi, beings that fit in between the creatures of fairy tale depictions of the Fair Folk, the mass blood-stained cultures of the Mayans and the Aztec, and due to a characteristic binding of the skulls of infants, elements of the Huns. So warlike and destructive were they that they were not content to maraud only on the forces of the Great Enemy, but they also preyed on the Sindar, whom they termed 'The Softlings" and in that process were caught between three fires. Their own nature, their enemies, and the pressures of an addiction to war and the waging of war. </em>
</p><p><em>The last of the Avari, Eol, was their greatest warrior and perhaps the least warlike of all his people. He shared with Feanor certain physical traits, a larger and bulkier physiogonmy, and a deeper grasp of metaphysics that has led some to view him, even in throwaway lines of both Bilbo Baggins and Professor Tolkien, as the Avari equivalent of Feanor. All the same, for all that he was not the most warlike, he committed perhaps the greatest sin in the history of the Eldar, and one that exposed one of their most ancient myths as what it was.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>One of the most curious beliefs of the Quendi was that theirs was a species immun to enduring and surviving one of the most grievous crimes, known and forbidden in laws and statements in all species. Even the Eldar of the Star-Queen forbade rape of their own kind, albeit in a fashion clearly influenced by the cruel logic of Varda that unauthorized attempts to breed displayed too much free will from her creation. Against other lifeforms, of all kinds, those that could talk and those that did not, it was a standard kind of torture visited, and usually a prelude to much more horrid means of slow and painful mutilation, the kind of sport the Eldar came to enjoy in the aftermath of the Burning when first they began to rove in freedom across the realm of Beleriand, and to build tribes and cultures of their own.</p><p>The codes of Men and of Dwarves are similar, and so appear to have been both their enforcement and the holes therein, in laws that are spartan and cruel by the standards of lesser years, more akin to elements of the codes of Moses and Hammurabi than the mentalities that would prefer to be seen in the eyes of later generations, less genteel in these matters than the more savage and barbarian cultures of the Hyborean Age.</p><p>For the Quendi, it was an article of faith that a Quendi woman taken by force would fade, that her soul would depart her body, and would be housed in Mandos until such time as grief spread. It was also an article of faith for men, though this topic is addressed in only occluded references to 'certain acts of Eldar-sport' done to the bodies and the captivity of certain elites and common Quendi. This was a belief that was held, even when the stories of Aredhel of the House of Fingolfin and the Dark Elf cast a pall on the fullness of its truth. In his writings, Bilbo Baggins references only a single case in his stays at Rivendell where a common Elf maiden was assaulted by a party of Eldar, and his writings indicate that the 'fading' in truth was a polite fiction on suicide, and that the violation of the flesh brought such existential horror on the soul that it led Elves to seek to depart, though his writing is at some of its shakiest and its rawest, horrified by the sight.</p><p>In the case of Aredhel, who dwelt in Gondolin, it is said that she developed a case of wanderlust. Before she fled the realm of Gondolin for a time, there was a brief clear night, and in its wake there were others who likewise roved out, though these returned in the starlight when high noon hit and sanity retook them. In a sudden thunder Aredhel had dressed in breeches and tunic, saddled her horse, and stormed out. Elven steeds were fleet of foot and with an endurance that no horse of later years matches, and this is held to represent a kind of magic that enabled the horses to function more like machines than proper steeds. Else, perhaps, simple hyperbole in that Aredhel is described as flying north from Gondolin at a gallop, coming therein to the realm to the southwest of Doriath and the very easternmost fringes of Nargothrond wherein dwelt the last of the Dark Elves.</p><p>Whatever manic force held her froze within the shadowy boughs of the Forest of Night wherein dwelt the Lord of the Night-Forest, though it was night when she stopped and sought shelter in the blessed darkness of the trees for herself and her horse from the soul-churning and devouring chorus of those howling entities that are called the stars. The wind in the Forest of Night seemed more like breathing than truly wind, and it echoed with voices, her own and that of her brother, and of lords of Doriath that were not in the forest and had never been.</p><p>As with all the House of Fingolfin, Aredhel was fearless, and she took her sword in her scabbard and drew it, and shouted in a loud voice that no phantoms of voices could scare one who had ridden through a night under the gaze of the stars, for no witch-whispers could be more fearsome than the Star-Queen's thralls. To her right from beneath a tree seemed to step from a space that could not have hidden a mouse an Elf of pallor reflecting a long life hiding beneath forests. Dark was his hair, dark as the Galvorn, the old armor and characteristic hue of the Avari. He came to her as a figure of horror but the strength of his body and of his Fea that blazed briefly from his eyes held her spellbound, and in that spell he bid from her lips pass words that she did not remember to have stated, and then there, in that place, he took her to wife, discarding the terrifying armor and reducing her to bare that which raiment conceals.</p><p>When it was done, the Dark Elf tied his new wife in a trance to her horse and led the creature to his mansion, wherein dwelt Aredhel for many and many a long long year. But a single son would the Avari and the Noldor-princess have, who in form and shape was that of the Noldor but his spirit was Avari, sullen and violent and prone to great rages, while simultaneously warlike and taking to the deeds of war and bravery in a fashion none could gainsay. In the birth of this son, Maeglin, much sorrow was to come, but all sources state that Maeglin, for all his unseemly lust for his first cousin, never acted upon it, accepted that his cousin refused his advances, and it took the direct compulsion of the Star Queen herself to tip unrequited love into the chain of events that brought forth the downfall of Gondolin, last of the Elven kingdoms to endure.</p><p>Long did Maeglin grow, taught the art of forging Galvorn, and indeed gaining his own suit of armor (as did Aredhel, though she declined to wear hers) and educations in the rough and brutal arts of war and of the Avari. Maeglin was the last speaker of the Avari tongue, and it is from him and a small set of documents preserved by Frodo Baggins, against the decision to discard them by Bilbo Baggins, that the Avari tongue and less than three hundred of its words are known. Aredhel, who had left Gondolin so rashly now pined for it, and told Maeglin great tales of the realm and that her brother as yet had no true heir, only a lovely daughter, Idril Celebrindal.</p><p>Among the Quendi, only Artanis, who for so long was named Man-Maiden, in Doriath was considered worthy as a ruler who could hold the power and the ceremonial responsibilities of a king. It is one of the less desirable traits among the Qiuendi and it is a view that in the actions of Quendi women, many of whom proved more effective and decisive than the men, seems invalidated by the truth of how their history actually unfolded. Yet it was in this sense that the tales of glorious Gondolin came, and then both Maeglin and his mother snuck out from the Forest of Night, taking the careful gamble to ride under the gaze of the ever-soul thirsting entities known as the stars on a clear night.</p><p>Maeglin did not look or listen to the starlight any more than his mother did, and both fled that night, riding back from whence they came. Eol followed them, and in that process was halted by Aegnor of the House of Finarfin, who with his golden hair like a lion's mane and the fierce light in his eyes seemed almost the Rider himself come to the Dark Elf. The Dark Elf greeted him in pride and told him that he was seeking his wife Aredhel, who had fled to the west, and Aegnor, usually one of the more kindly among the Quendi and the most of his family, gave him a hard stare and told him that those who committed so great a wrong as he had best count it his good fortune that he did not encounter the House of Feanor, who would have reacted to an Avari marrying a child of the Noldor with the sharp ends of blades.</p><p>On that note, Eol would depart and he soon found the traces of the passing of his family, an enchantment in his Galvorn calling to its kind, and by degrees he passed an Aredhel and Maeglin who not spurred by star-madness moved more slowly, not traversing on clear nights past areas shielding themselves and their animals from the starlight, and by swift marches he caught up with them, in a display of the power of the Avari honed by the long and terrible unsung wars with the Star-Queen's hordes. They had arrived at Gondolin, the conditions of their clothes and the existence of Maeglin attracting great murmurs of awe, fear, and suspicion.</p><p>Maeglin meekly, in the retrospect of other things, accepted that he was examined and question that he was not Eldar, or half-Eldar, and proved this to more than satisfaction when news came of a figure who had strode before the walls of Gondolin the next morning, clad in the same kind of dark armor as Aredhel's breastplate and the full plate suit that cloaked Maeglin.</p><p>Eol was brought at spear point with a surprising calmness before King Turgon, who questioned him with great and furious anger at how this 'Avari bastard' dared to molest his sister, and Eol simply spoke n calmness that Aredhel had desired it, but he would accept her return while demanding his son, the only other of his kind, return to him. Maeglin in turn refused and refused with a calmness rare among him, motivated by an awareness that others lacked of how dangerous and malevolent his father was and could be, and when he was ordered by the sharp edge of one of the guard of Gondolin to accept his father's decision, he snarled and seemed to do so. Then, turning to leave, he bent down and moved his boot slightly and raised a sharp and wicked blade, curved in a fashion akin to a scimitar, and then hurled it straight at Maeglin. Aredhel, no longer clad in her breastplate, threw herself in front of her son and the blade pierced her through the heart, causing her to fall and Maeglin to whirl around, yelling in anguish as the spears of the Gondolin guard impaled his father, leaving Maeglin an orphan, the first blood shed in Gondolin from the life of Maeglin spilled, and Maeglin for a long time brooding and disconsolate.</p><p>It was toward the end of this time that he expressed his love and desires toward his cousin Idril, whom pulled away from his arms and told him that not only did Eldar not wed kin so near, but even if it were permissible that she feared a hate and wrath in his heart that could not work with her. She then quietly told him that as her cousin they could be friends, even close friends, but no desire of the kind he expressed could or would long endure, and if he sought to go beyond her words.....and in that silence Maeglin nodded, and for a long time those words spoken quietly would be forgotten until the coming of Tuor, son of Huor, and in the wakes of his coming, the fall of Gondolin, and the House of Bright Earendil, mightiest of Mariners, and in the presence of his family like a coming again of the glories of the First Age in the storied events of the War of Ruin in the Third.</p><p>The events surrounding the person of the Dark Elf were fresh in the mind and in the still-visible bloodstains on the floor of the court of Gondolin when other riders arrived. Soldiers of Fingolfin, asking Gondolin to send its detachment to the ranks. In the north, where the Hell-Queen's domain in the Isle of the World-Destroyers glowed with the soul-hunger of starlight, armies were starting to gather, and in the fear of the irruption of the Eldar came the greatest gathering of Quendi strength until that of Nirnaeth Arnoediad, which is to the Elves what Nanduhirion, the Battle of the Burned Dwarves, is to the kindred of the Naugrim.</p><p>As Turgon prepared to depart himself, Ulmo rose from the waters near Doriath, and in his tectonic warnings, Turgon obeyed with grave doubt, and sent a force of infantry from his realm under the command of a general, Palantir, known for his limited prescience. This general's face was stoic and he wore clothing the hue of mourning, and when the news would come to distant Gondolin of why none of the troops sent to what became the War of the Burning returned, all understood and from that point Gondolin knew no further of the events of Middle-Earth until the coming of Huor and Hurin on the backs of a stripling Dragon some hundreds of years hence.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. The War of the Burning and the Duel of Fingolfin Against the Shadow-Queen:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After four hundred years of the Siege of Angband, vast armies mobilize first in the West, near what was once Tol Sirion, where the strongest armies of the Quendi under the direct oversight of Fingolfin, in the First Grand Alliance of Elves, Men, and Dwarves. They are confident that no matter what forces assail them, even those of the Hell-Queen herself, they can prevail. They are wrong.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>For four hundred years the Siege of Angband endured, the armies only devouring lives as a screw without end toward the end, to a point that Gondolin's untapped reservoir of soldiers was at last delved into. In the years immediately before the Burning armies of Eldar began to assemble around Tor Ni Muspelli, first by thousands, then by tens of thousands, then by hundreds of thousands. As the armies grew and swelled to proportions dwarfing even the largest forces of the Siege, Fingolfin in his full power as High King of the Noldor drew the mightiest armies and the most skllful soldiers of those armies to the West likewise, where under his personal command and that of his son his forces sought to build up. Against a quarter-million Eldar, the armies of the Free Peoples were outnumbered by nearly twenty to one, but firepower remained a great equalizer and even improved tactics did not alter the lesser technological basis of Varda's armies. In the wake of what happened, it is worth noting that like all debacles, human and non-human, the Dagor Bragollach began with the greatest confidence on the part of the side that suffered most.-Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>SOUTH OF TOR NI MUSPELLI:</p><p>"I know you're tired of hearing this, Milord, but I do not like the looks of....any of this."</p><p>Fingolfin gave a sour look to Seruchior, his Marshal of the armies.</p><p>"I am tired of hearing of it, not least because I do not like the looks of this, either."</p><p>For the last few months the vast armies around Tor Ni Muspelli had bloated, now spanning a quarter million in vast squares. Armies that stupefied him how anyone could control them. The Balrogs, the most reliable predictors of major offensives, had only a single lord and lesser rank and file as the highest echelon besides the Hell-Queen herself and of her there was no sign, nor had there been for some time. The forces from Gondolin had arrived two nights ago and been integrated in to fill out the remaining portion of the Right Wing, all the artillery was already zeroed in.</p><p>The low murmurs and echoes of star-song had fallen silent, a thing that had not happened since......</p><p>That silence and the dawning horror among the most veteran Quendi and Dwarves was followed when a new chant began to echo from the ranks of the Eldar, bellowed at the top of their lungs, a great thunderclap and a reverent sound like masses before their Gods. </p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>The peals echoed, and a strange kind of stormcloud began to gather, and a curious wind to blow. Only the inhabitants of Angband knew that an incautious Maia of Manwe's with power over the wind and the storm had ventured too close to the Eldorodrim on a cloudless night and been captured by Ilmare Hell-Queen herself who had moved unclad from her fortress and waited clinging to the spire for just that chance. Given the task to break the Maia, Ilmare had exorcised her own self-hatred and that which lay behind the many deep scars that pitted her back into the Maia of Manwe's, who had been progressively broken and dominated and now served to unleash at last the plan her mistress had planned all along. For all that Ilmare believed herself the better general, Varda Elentari saw in spheres that she could not and dreamed dreams beyond her imagining. </p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>A titan strode through the armies, a being of seeming blackness illuminated by starlight, such that the darkness receded into the soul-hunger of her stars. In their maker their song was terrifying and potent, in this case no song of simple words or rhymes but a powerful pulsing droning that cracked the ground, the drumb-beat behind the chants of her title. She was tall, immensely so, in this form that after this duel would become a sign of the shape in whence she was hidden, and in the forms that she was hidden. No more would she be able to go unclad, nor in a form less marked by the singing of starlight, though to Elentari this was no great burden.</p><p>A quarter million strong congregation singing her name, echoing in the impacts of her footfalls and the harmonies that made the air tremble and crack around her and beneath her, and the several times grandchildren of the first generations to have seen the Star-Queen in her fullness of form in Hildorien, to whom she had become a figure of distant legend, the thing beneath the Earth whose power made itself manifest in the forms of the Star-Blooded Eldar, the Burning-Eyed monsters that were either shrieking and incoherent abominations only loosely in the form of men, or disciplined soldiers in armor that moved in fashions like and yet horribly unlike the kin of the Free Peoples.</p><p>In the flesh, the giant that was like the clear-nights where the horrid soul-drinking lights that twinkled and gibbered and sang, in dream and waking, and cast tendrils to the Earth, a being of outline stamped with the shape of a woman whose presence was illuminated by the courses and the patterns of light that did not bend or curve as light would, wearing a great crown to her scale with three gems that gleamed. The Silmarilli, the pure and bright blue light of true starlight, a holy thing on an arch-demon, a thing that mocked with the dissonance of its presence. The Men who saw her were stern stuff, none who were heirs of the Edain who had reaved their way through her deranged human followers and the inhuman abominations of star-blooded nature would not be.</p><p>Yet their eyes swam with tears and they trembled, while the Elves sank to their knees the distant prospects of what could have been augmented by the shock effect of seeing her who would have been the Queen of all Arda still resonant within them all. Her arms raised, starlight trailing along a graceful shape that was and wasn't akin to the children of Illuvatar, and as the wind intensified, the thing that looked at them with the Silmarilli in her crown smiled and then star-flame began to blaze and was carried along the wind, and in a howling gale that sang blood-skulls-ruin-flame-scour-burn-kill-maim the armies and the most advanced technology, that most vital legacy of old Aman, that which had made the armies unstoppable against any horde of her servants, melted and dissolved along with the soldiers, their souls hurled to Mandos and suffering the burns of the terrible witch-light of the Elentari's power.</p><p>In but a few minutes, the Star-Flame sang and blew on the winds of Manwe's captive Maia, broken and enthralled by the Hell-Queen, and in its dreadful burning, and in that burning and rippling fire the ruin of the Noldor, Men, and Naugrim of the Lines of Fire was encompassed and compressed into the span of less than an hour. The Star-Flame burned and left a molten scar, which would become the Iron Ring of the Anfauglith, a name first applied to the blasted heath that had once been livable, if arid, and where the Star-Flame burned nothing could live.</p><p>Fingolfin and his sons, and those of the elite of the Noldor, Naugrim, and Men who had conversed behind the lines (a  fortunate occasion in that it turned out that this was the most prominent and the most powerful who were spared by a circumstance of timing) looked at the fire-storm and a rage fell on Fingolfin. Some said that it was Star-Madness amplified by what seemed the ruin of four hundred years, the breaking of the Siege, and the mocking display of the Star-Queen's power, but in the eyes of others, the views expressed by those that wrote the chronicles, it was the courage of wrath, despair, hatred. And it burned from him with such fire that when he strode to the Star-Queen, who still stood before her armies, that it seemed as if he had become one of the Valar, Orome, or even Tulkas Astaldo.</p><p>The fire-storm ceased and she turned to gaze at the Elf-Lord who stood before her.</p><p>"Elentari, Queen of Shadows and of Ravens!"</p><p>Her gaze met his and it was detached, aristocratic, a sneer of great power that his wrath and power led him to reject.</p><p>"You fight with sorcery and treachery, unleashing your witch's poisons upon honorable soldiers. I challenge thee to a duel of weapons, else before thy throng thee be seen as craven, a being of sorcerer's duels who has no power beyond this."</p><p>With a sneer, Varda's gaze turned to her servant, who found herself for one of the few times in her life bearing the hammer one of the Maia who had been of Aule had forged for the Star-Queen.</p><p>Varda held it in her hands across her body, standing before the Quendi.</p><p>
  <em><strong>In the time before the first fathers of your breed awoke, a captive thrall of Aule the Forge-King's made this for me, along with my crown and other objects. I call this Glamdring, the Foe-Hammer.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She smiled, and the harmonics of of that smile made Fingolfin wince, but in that moment she moved with a blinding speed that far surpassed what he expected and moved Glamdring, and clove a great impact into the ground. By narrow degrees Fingolfin dodged the great swing as he did others. Varda had ever waged conflict with the fires that burned within her and thirsted for blood, and in this lack of focus in weaponry it was clear to Fingolfin, and to her more veteran troops. Yet the light that blazed within her hungered and it began to feed from Fingolfin, who felt absent the power of Melkor to filter it away the full power of what it was to know the attention of the Stars.</p><p>His ears rang with their music, and this disoriented him, yet Varda's inexperience told the greater as he would cut her not less than seven times on the soles of both feet and at each time she would bellow in wrath and her servants bowed their heads and clutched their ears. For Varda, the wounds from the hand of a mortal incensed her and her swings became wilder, the ground pitted with scarring that left it lunar craters. Finally the power of the stars that siphoned from the very Fea of what beheld them told as with the pitting on the ground and he stepped  the wrong way and slipped, and her foot, still bleeding slightly, pressed its weight upon him like a great hill.</p><p>It was an eerie feeling to feel the weight of something that was and wasn't a foot, an outline of seeming darkness illuminated by light such that only the dimmest edges of the shadows endured. The smell of burning flesh meant the foot of Varda was the pyre of Fingolfin and when she withdrew, she stooped to take his body, to pin his corpse from the spires of her palace, a monument to his defeat.</p><p>At that instance a dragon stooped and clawed at her face and this time she did bellow in wrath and her star-flame struck the creature, which fled in turn, but not before its tail grasped the body of Fingolfin, later buried with honor, as his son Fingon, now the new High King of the Noldor, grasped at once that with the Siege broken and the Star-Queen the author of its breaking that new legions, those rising directly from Angband's gates thrice the numbers of those in the Isle of the World-Destroyers, would swarm outward. Now the vision of his father that he had condemned before the Burning of so many Elven cities dug deep underground seemed wise indeed. The Star-Queen did not directly lead her armies, but she had no need to do so.</p><p>Under Gothmog armies surged out to storm the ranks of the outer marches of the Sons of Feanor in the east.</p><p>Under the Hell-Queen and her Muspelli, the legions thronging her fortress began to march in disciplined ranks,</p><p>
  <em>A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!</em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>silivren penna míriel</em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>o menel aglar elenath,</em>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>echoed across the expanse of Arda. The Star-Queen strode back with slow confidence, savoring the impact of her appearance and the odor of burned flesh an offering from herself to herself by fire, and the stench of it was pleasing in her nostrils. </p><p>She limped slightly, the wounds on her feet making her motions more slow and halting, but this did not detract from the impact, nor the kind of power her presence had as she was the benediction her armies sought to march out to rape and to war, Balrog captains in the van, and then, arriving at the gates of her fortress, she opened them herself and strode in, returning to her throne.</p><p>Returning to it, she sat with serenity, listening anew to the music of the spheres.</p><p>The lines were broken, her armies free to swarm at will. One by one the kingdoms of her foes would fall. One by one, and with each eradicated, the world would be that much closer to her rising from her fortress again.</p><p>When the Moon rose over the devastation and the melted flesh and metal and the horrid scenes of her devastation, its light brought her out of her trance, and she stared upward. She had not wounded the Sun, not totally. Melkor's wretched wife burned with a heat powerful enough to defy her greatest of poisons. A cold smile crossed her lips. The wife might be strong enough to endure, but would the Moon?</p><p>Her feet still stung, and that was its reminder to be patient, to wait until the scars solidified. Given healing, even in the limitations of an incarnate form, such as they were for she who lit the stars and was animated by her light (idly she wondered what Melkor would have become like this. For all his power, she suspected he would become fearful and weak. She had no such fear, even incarnate, even at her weakest, she could light fires that would burn the world to ashes, for hers was the power of the Heavens, and in them, and in their song, she could endure unchanged for all time.</p><p>In the eyes of her stars she gazed, and her gaze turned to Valinor itself, which while hidden to the Quendi who had become caught in the Ban was visible to her. The Darkening meant a cloud cover anew, for there were no trees, but the cloud cover could and did fade. On this night it had faded just enough that the Houses of Melkor and Manwe were visible. The Great King was not in his house, but her beloved was in his.</p><p>TANIQUIETL, HOUSE OF MANWE SULIMO:</p><p>It was a clear night this high up on Tanequietl, when the fell light of the stars gleamed and sang in their hellish chorus, the eerie howl of dissonance. Melkor had descended to the surface of Aman to converse with others of the Valar. The Doom of Mandos might be at work, and Melkor obligated to obey it, but he sought all the same to repair Varda's harm and her work. Never did the labors of the Valar cease, and in Ulmo they had one who would go amongst the peoples of Arda and speak to them and work to their aid. Manwe remained on the mountain on this night, not certain why he did it, but the stars then sighed</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Manwe, my beloved.....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>He froze, and then looked up.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Manwe.......</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>A voice soft and lovely-sounding but he knew what malice was within its heart. He remembered all too well the time in Varda's domain, where he'd been a pampered pet kept and constantly tempted by Varda's presence, by her caresses and her efforts to win him to her desire and to her claim. Varda had taken from him a deep kiss, once, the singular physical act in the manner of the Children, her last deed before going up to fight the Valar, the day that Nessa had descended and bound her. His hand touched her lip as her voice sighed from the stars.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Manwe, beloved, mine from before the pages of time. I have chosen you, and I chose you, and you are mine, and ever shall you remain mine, into the end of all things.</strong> </em>
</p><p>His hand moved from his lips.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>I see you, beloved, in your home. You hear me, you hear my voice echoed in these, my creations, my stars that ring your wind and your domain. We are promised, Manwe of the Air, we have always been promised. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>The Children burn in their wretched war, they have failed. Now I shall fall upon their kingdoms....One....by....one. Not a stone shall be left atop another, and their realms shall burn and be made as ashes. And when I am done with them, when the Children have fallen before my power, and my stars, I shall return to Aman victorious with a raiment made of their flesh, faces of their leaders and their elite, and when I return, victorious and conqueror of the spheres of our Father's Children, Arien shall kneel, and Tillion weep, Melkor be deposed from that throne that was never his to claim. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>And I, ruler of all that is on Arda as in the Stars, shall ascend with you and in the glory of my realms you and I shall dance, and make love, and be as the Children but greater, sealed in flesh as in soul. A thing of Glory, Wind-Lord, together you and I, beyond the end of all things. And our Father shall weep, that all that He says is His will be undone, and I the greater, as I have ringed all of your works in my greatness.</strong> </em>
</p><p>He closed his eyes and tears fell, the love that burned between them a thing of his private griefs.</p><p>
  <em><strong>You do feel it too, you always have. I should have done more than kiss you there, beloved. And in time, when I am victorious, when the oceans boil away and our siblings are brought to kneel, in time, you and I shall know such sweet things together. I shall take you before them all, and in that union I shall make the one who humbled me know the sweet pleasure of the flesh, of my flesh, and cast her beyond the Doors, that she wail torn from her husband for all eternity. We shall be as one and be Queen and consort of all Arda, and it shall be music more beautiful than my chorus. </strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Ilmare.......she could be as you but she is strong, star-flame, as Olorin the Faithless is. She will not bend, not truly, hence the delight in humbling her and letting her imagination see what she will. Too strong a servant to be allowed too free a hand. But you? You are wind, and the wind is everywhere, and in all things, and it is nothing. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>The Children are burning, my Sulimo. They are burning, and then Aman will burn, and we shall know what we have always been meant to know.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The stars sighed and Manwe wept, and Varda whispered into his ears all through the night.</p><p>Dawn came the next day and he looked to the shining face of Melkor the Great King, whose hand was on his shoulder in a gentle yet firm reminder of sibling loyalty.</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>I know how much you hurt, my brother. You love her, and in her own fashion, she believes she loves you, or the idea of being loved by you. I had hoped, once, that this love might redeem her were such a thing possible. She warred against the Music, but......</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>He sighed.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Our father's greatest power is not in us, nor in love itself, for love can be a thing of evil in the wrong hands. It is in compassion, in the sphere of Nienna. In the name of that power, even one of the Second-born and an Elf Maiden could go into her realm and take a very Silmaril from her head, We are mighty, the monarchs of all spheres save the stars and the realm beyond the walls of Arda and its eight siblings. But against that power, and I remind you only of what our Father told us before we descended to Arda and she began to bring to being her chorus that whispers and sings, compassion and those she deems least are greater dangers to the spirit of the stars than anything else. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>You are not weak, brother, to love and to feel love for one who is the root of all that has become....wrong...in this world. You are greater than I though I was made king of all things. I would see Varda beyond the Doors, I would have denied her access to this realm, for mine are the instincts of kings and kings are cold and they are brutal and they are architects of ruin as much as they are good and kindly figures. You love her still when her stars whisper and sing in horror, you love her still after being her slave for a time in her first fortress. Would that you were king and I executor of our father's will, for I have no doubt that were you King of all things on this mountain that I would be grateful and the greatest agent of all that you would will.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Melkor sighed.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Namo says it will be another night tonight like it was last night. Come down, brother, join us in conclave.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Manwe nodded, stiffly.</p><p>
  <em>She says the Children are burning.</em>
</p><p>Melkor sighed at a much sadder level.</p><p>
  <strong><em>They have chosen a war of great valor but great folly against the enemy of all things. They will burn, but Ulmo's writ means one shall come to save them. Hearing Varda's whispers saves none of them, and it merely reminds you of what can never be.</em> </strong>
</p><p>His eyes turned up to the clear skies where Arien traversed, skies that were clear in Aman in the day though night was shielded in cloud and in fog.</p><p>
  <strong>I too am apart from one I love, and her mission is to be the light and the hope of all that is. If anyone can understand you, brother, it is I.</strong>
</p><p>Manwe nodded, the tears flowing freely and he reached to hold Melkor, who was silent, a single tear running down his cheek and in that silence, the Great King and the Wind-Lord remained in the early morning hours as Arien's dawn brought the dawn-chorus, wholesome and leavened with the murmurs of gratitude for another sunrise, time when the baleful light of the stars was  occluded.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. From the War of the Burning to the coming of Beren Erchamion to Doriath:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Siege of Eldaband is broken and the hordes of the Eldar begin a slow and methodical and unrelenting destruction of the realms of the Quendi, one by one. Under the Hell-Queen of the World-Destroyers kingdoms burn and Elves and Men are taken into the hellscape of Eldaband and enslaved and she, allowed to exult in cruelty given instead of received, does so. There is no peace in Arda, only an eternity of slaughter and carnage and the laughter of thirsting stars.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>One of the greatest ironies of the Red Book is that one of its very most beautiful tales, that of Beren Erchamion and Luthien Tinuviel, who faced the colossus that made stars that devoured the soul and stole a very Silmaril from her crown, is preceded by the grim litany of the new perpetual war that flared in all truth from the time of the Burning to the War of Wrath, and in the form of the rise of Ilmare of the Kingdom of Muspelheim flared anew for two more ages of fire and death and the ruin of worlds and all that was within them. When High King Fingolfin fell, the glory of the Quendi fell with him, and though in the Second and Third Ages it would experience small revivals, never would it truly flower again, and in the long sequence of decline the realm of Gods and material evil would fall and dwindle, though in the form of Thoth-Amon of Hyborea and in other forms it has found lesser manifestations in the minds of mortals. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Perhaps it is precisely because of the marauding power of the Eldar that the tales of hope stand out as much as the other narratives that in tune follow it. The hopeless decay of  Quendi Kingdoms becomes a quest for a Silmaril that succeeds in spite of all that is against it, and in the revival of the ancient evils of the oath the Quendi fall within as the Eldar besiege them without. From there to the grim and terrible narrative of the Children of Hurin, where Varda's malice stands as its most petty, and from there to the tale of their cousin Tuor and the fall of Gondolin, last of the Elven Kingdoms of the old age, and then still further to one last burst of hope when the migithiest of all voyagers makes his destination. A voyager who, it is said, would either discover or be bequeathed with the basis of a more benevolent kind of space travel of that wielded by the Eldar of Muspelheim at the end of the War of Ruin in the Third Age. </em>
</p><p><em>So is it that as an end of an age of legend, when the greatest of all evils, an evil that as the fossils of the other things prove must have been physically real also, remains incarnate and visible and acting, ultimately falls that hope shines brightest...and with it as each cycle of hope spirals upward, war's cruelties magnify.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman. </p><p>Few times would the Elentari move directly from her realm. She would do so but once more into the heavens themselves, in the Arnoediad, and then but once more in the very end of the First Age when the last and most hopeless phase of her war came, striding in wrath and madness against the weight of the Host of the West. in that first appearance, within a week of the Burning, as her armies began to spread ever outward and to lay low the Kingdoms of Quendi and of Men, she would open her gates and stand beneath the singing spires of her palace when the Moon rose, and with a sense of calmness transformed herself into an Eagle, a mocking form akin to the greatest spirits of Sulimo, and flew upward and upward and upward.</p><p>The Moon, in one of those case of ambiguity in the lore of the Quendi, is both the person, Tilion, and a craft that he steers. It would seem that in this case, the person was the strong, for Varda landed on the Moon not as an eagle but as herself, a woman illuminated by starlight and echoing in a resounding element of her element, seemingly charged and empowered by it. On her face was that sinister grin she had flashed on that first day when she had descended from the stars amongst the weight of Arda. Tilion faced her with genuine fear, for even as incarnation took its toll to weaken elements of her power she ever retained the blazing power and soul-ravaging force of the star s and of starlight as her own.</p><p>In her hand was another weapon, empowered with the venom of a creature she had begun to make in mockery of Melkor's dragons, a weapon to be unleashed as the last blade of defeat, a day that she had neither anticipation nor belief would or could come. It was empowered with the venom of her starlight, singing and humming in the glory of blood, and as that venom gleamed she strode to either the man of the moon or the moon itself, to where the future expedition of the 60s would find a scar in the Sea of Tranquility that glowed and sang a terrible music of battle and death, of songs of the end of all things and how when the Doors of Night would be burned through Varda would return in power and glory, and in the light of the stars the world would burn and shrivel alike with heat and with cold. </p><p>So strode Varda to what was the Sea of Tranquility, or so she held the very moon itself as a titan that briefly broke down cloud-cover over all Arda and beneath the screams of mortals they saw the Queen of the Stars become as a giant next to whom the Moon was very small and take a wicked blade, and with a smile of starlight between her lips the blade flashed and the moon bled.</p><p>It is called the Starless night thereafter for Arien came to the aid of Tilion, discarding briefly her form as the great Daystar itself and in her arrival Varda hissed and left the Moon to die, descending upon Arda for the last time as a giant whose presence was stamped by the screaming of starlight. The power of the Sun healed the Moon, that ever after the Moon gleamed not with its own light but a mirror of the Sun's, for the Moon could no longer give forth light of itself. In the wake of that healing the shadow on the moon at night was burned into it, the great Rabbit of the Moon, a lasting trace of the malice of the Star Queen, and a mark of the Darkening of the Moon.</p><p>In this, there seems to be as much an explanation of the phases of the moon as anything else yet Mithril is as it is said to be in the lore of Arda. No power but that of its makers may truly wield it. Fossils of the Eldar display properties no mere explanation of biology may quantify, the traces of circulatory systems that bled the singing power of starlight. If beings with blood of star-flame are real, and stalked the Earth, and with the historicity of Thoth-Amon, last of the Istari attested fact, then may it be said that science and mystical truths are but two sides of the same coin, and each alike wielded by a power great, terrible, and impartial.</p><p>And when the source speaks of a giant clad in starlight that fell from the skies with her hair of starlight whirling around her head, eyes gleaming with that terrible power, and the very foundation of the Earth rocked at her impact, and that in the cloudless night that stalked around the world stood, arms spread out, and all reality echoed with the Music of the Spheres, then they too may be taken at their word. There were giants in the Earth in those days, and they were great and terrible. and so were their deeds.</p><p>With her return to her throne, Varda dwelt over a realm expanded by the captives taken, as one by one the Quendi kingdoms fell. First to fall were Hithlum and Himlad, the realms of the Sons of Feanor, against which colossal hordes of Eldar swarmed them. Reduced from their firepower and made to fight on an equal footing with the Star-Blooded in weaponry, the Quendi were valiant, but valor in itself cannot stop power that smites boulders to dust with the might of a blade. Proud had been the sons of Feanor and they had resisted the pleading of Fingolfin for aid even when their realms were first endangered.</p><p>The hosts of the Eldar swarmed forth. By scores of thousands they swarmed, the Balrogs leading them, the shouts:</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>echoing, sometimes in tune with the blades and mattocks that fell upon the bodies of those in villages.</p><p>Hithlum, directly south of the Tor Ni Muspellir, was targeted not by Balrogs alone but by the personal power of the Hell-Queen, against which no mortal could stand. For even the mightiest of the Maiar, Mairon, Eonwe, Olorin, and Melian of old had been as nothing to her, and with her. Ilmare's starlight-gleam burned and her sword of fire, the mighty Nightfall, earning infamy already in this age and more would it earn in the second and the third where it served as the father of the Muspel-work that echoed with the rings of starlight and its menace. Hithlum's Quendi kingdoms fell in the dreadful sacking of Mithlum, where in the wake of the fall of Fingolfin the son of Feanor in the vicinity had taken their seat.</p><p>Arrogant were they in the full measure of their family, and they rode with a great army to face the Eldar and the Hell-Queen. Nightfall did she withdraw from her scabbard and in starlight's hue did her armies raise the chant, and in that chant did they march in turn, some riding on new monsters of Ilmare's own work, things that had been as wolves, once, but were known as the Fenrinir, great ravenous creatures. Her own steed was called Draug-luin, the Blue-Wolf and its hue was blue as the night sky, its eyes pools of starlight. Of all Draugluin's breed one mightiest of them all would come, and he would be whelped by Draugluin's mate within a few days and grow and fatten next to the Star-Queen herself. Carcharoth, that one was named, Ever-Hungry, and it was said to be fattened on the very sweetest servings of the meat of Quendi-flesh.</p><p>The sight of the first of the Werewolves, massive things that could, it was said, become men or wolves alike by willpower, and its colossal bulk supporting the fully armored weight of the Hell-Queen and her blazing sword struck dismay, as did the revelation of the newly equipped Werewolf-riders, whose lances thrummed with starlight, steeds howling in hunger and thirst. The Quendi did not seek to wield cavalry on any scale until the Second Age, and in that first confrontation the proud armies of the Feanorians were routed and the more fortunate ended up in the bellies of the wolves that would linger when the riders dismounted to feast upon the dead. The most fortunate, including the very Feanorians themselves, fled.</p><p>Those least so would find themselves drawn into the belly of the new realm of the Muspelli, or into the dreaded realm of Eldaband, Utumno.</p><p>Himlad in the far east would fall likewise to an army under the direct command of Gothmog. There the Sons of Feanor, with the last of what was left of the old tech of the Noldor waged a bitter fight that lasted for the better part of four mortal months, sowing the ground with Eldar corpses. Yet when the ammunition ran dry, Gothmog himself took the field and in a dreadful sacking and rampage, the Sons of Feanor in the East fared better than did their compatriots in the West, withdrawing with the rest of their armies intact, if more technologically impoverished than they had been.</p><p>Dor-Lomin itself endured, the last trace of old Hithlum, as it would until the aftermath of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, when Varda herself took command of her legions in the decisive trial of strength, when the legacy of the Hadorians and the House of Hurin drew Varda's malice directly to this place and all that was within. The original lords, the Halethians, withdrew to Brethil, where by their valor hardened under the starlight they held the forest until the War of Wrath. For a time, under the Hadorians, Dor-Lomin knew a flowering of strength that would be all too brief.</p><p>In this time, with the fall of the northern kingdoms and the the withdrawals of the Free Peoples to the now-multi-species realms of Nogrod and Belegost, which underwent a kind of renaissance in the east, Gondolin in the far southwest, and Nargothrond and Doriath before it, an incident occurred that would resound in a grand way and an unpredictable one. In the War of the Burning, among the Beorians, there were a group led by the heir of the House, Barahir. They had gone forth and when the Star-Queen rose personally and ignited the Firestorm of Starlight, they among the twelve had survived, fighting valiantly and hewing their way through ranks of Eldar.</p><p>Among their ranks was one Gorlim, who would return to their realm to find his wife missing and his place sacked. Only the nature of charring indicated that perhaps it was a servant of the Star-Queen. To the north of Doriath the Great, their ranks were among the last who fought to the bitter end in the Burned Forest. It was said of Barahir, son of Beregund, and his son Beren, that these years in the burned forest beneath the songs of Varda's stars gave them not immunity to the starlight, but a hardiness akin to the Sindar So mighty and crafty did they become that no less than the Hell-Queen herself came south to seek the nature of this foe. Veiling herself from her usual displays of power, she noticed that among the ranks Gorlim would seek at times after his wife, and a design came to her mind.</p><p>The twelfth such night of his venturing to the southeast, he was taken by a group of Eldar, ambushed and his body dragged to a throne set in the north of the burned forest. There, he looked upon a woman fair in seeming with eyes that seemed unusually bright, and then unveling her full gleaming power the Hell-Queen spoke, and with the cruelties of her Eldar put him to the question. Hearing his pleading to find out of the fate of his wife, the Hell-Queen promised sagely that if he would reveal the number, the hiding places, and the escape routes of the last of the royal house of the Beorians then he would be reunited with his wife. </p><p>Born down by the question and the heat of the starlight against his skin, Gorlim broke and wept and revealed the truth, at which point the Hell-Queen rose from the throne, thanking him, and telling him that he would indeed be sent to his wife, and pulled him to her lips directly, and in a kiss gave him the heat of the very starlight to roil down to his belly and burn him alive from within. With his shrieks and the odor of his flesh behind him, the Hell-Queen directed her Muspellir to ring the forest, but to dim their light that they might not be detected at first.</p><p>The witching hour came and the sword Nightfall gleamed into burning light and at that signal a cruel and a pitiless massacre ensued, of whom there was but one survivor, Beren, the future Erchamion. Knowing that he could not seek revenge on the Hell-Queen herself, Beren sought the small section of Eldar that had killed his father directly, stalking them through the woods, and slaying them all one by one. It was the first of his great feats, and his second would follow it. To the south he fled, through the Ered Gorgoroth and the Nan Dungortheb wherein dwelt the vast and bloated Ungoliant, daughter of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Ram of the Woods.</p><p>He, a mere mortal man, survived, though pale and shivering and with strange wounds, and echoing two phrases.</p><p><em>Teke-li-li! Teke-li-li!</em> was one of them. So too <em>Ia! Shub-Niggurath, Black Ram of the Woods with ten thousand ewe!</em> </p><p>Strange blood splattered his tunic and his trousers, blood that was not his own, and his original sword was melted to a half-sword. </p><p>Staggering, shivering, and wounded, he of ancient and storied knowledge came to Doriath in its deep rich forest-shadows. There he glimpsed a light, brilliant and radiant, more than anything he'd ever imagined. A light clad in blue raiment, a dress that at points was as thick as wool and in others transparent, singing in the lovely song and voice that gave her the name she is known ever after. Tinuviel, the Nightingale. Fairest of all that is in Arda, and all that would ever be.</p><p>She who was fairest of them all danced and sang, in the safety of the forest where no starlight could gaze, her light, the light of her mother, gleaming.</p><p>Melian the Maia, mightiest of all in Arda itself, shared with another Maia, Olorin, a great secret that she'd asked her daughter to veil from the sight of mortals. She, as Olorin, were fate to have decreed otherwise, would have been among the servants of the Hell-Queen. She had helped her mistress fashion the first seven stars before grasping her nature and rejecting her. So too had Olorin and with her he had fled to Arda, in the most distant depths of time. A Maia of the stars and of starlight, she alone gleamed with a light not unlike that of the Silmarilli, the simple and pure starlight that the Allfather had meant to be the comfort and the joy of the deathless Quendi.</p><p>From Varda's singing-stars to the beautiful gleaming light of Tinuviel, it was a jolt that entranced Beren, and in doing so sealed his fate, and that of TInuviel, and of Melian, called by the servants of the Star-Queen the Treacherous, of Elu Thingol of the Vanyar, and of all Doriath. Luthien danced and gleamed with pure and holy starlight, and Beren sang in turn, the chorus that echoed to pure starlight, to what could have been but would never be.</p><p>
  <em>Tinuviel Tinuviel, more fair than eyes can tell! Tinuviel!</em>
</p><p>His voice echoed and Tinuviel's eyes awoke, and she looked at Beren in bemusement and fear, for starlight and its legacy were ever among the most feared of all things among the Eldar. The children of Westernesse did not and do not boast of the lineage of Kemenros, grandchild of Beren and of Luthien. The House of Kemenrond, their other son, would seek to keep quiet the dark secret at the heart of their family until she who was seen as Tinuviel reborn, Arwen the Last Daughter, was born and in her gleamed the power of that pure starlight brilliant and radiant.</p><p>Yet in wonder and in awe did Beren stare at her, and what others would have seen immediately the kinship to the gleaming lights of the Star-Queen and the Hell-Queen and reacted with fear and hatred (as the future would hold for Tinuviel when the fell hand of the Quest fell upon others), to him was the most beautiful light that he had ever seen. Had Elu Thingol seen Beren son of Barahir in that moment, perhaps his harsh words would have been stilled, and a bittersweet smile of memory and of destiny likewise. But such was not to be, and in that simple moment the glowing Tinuviel strode to Beren and their hands touched, fingers together, and she who was as tall as he and glowing with the light that would have been looked in wonder at simple acceptance and awe, and in that, grasped a love that would shake the very stars themselves.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. The Hell-Queen's Weariness:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Waiting still for Beren son of Barahir to emerge from the region around the Nan Dungortheb, Ilmare is greeted by Thuringwethil, who gives her an order directly from her Queen. The Star-Queen would speak to the Hell-Queen. With fear and trepidation does Ilmare go to Angband, and as she arrives, her trepidation and fear are all too justified.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>NEAR THE FOREST OF DOROTHINION:</p><p>Ilmare the Hell-Queen remained watching at the edge of the forest, nearer the Nan Dungortheb, as she had for the last twelve mortal days. There was but one of those whom she had sought to capture and to ensure the demise of who had seemed, somehow, to elude her. Beren son of Barahir. That chafed. Where she was let loose she had succeeded in in all but a very few things, the idea that some mere mortal, even one of the Secondborn whose souls were not like the souls of others, could do it....her skin, in its hue a darker variant of that normal among the Children, blazed back into its truer form of Starlight, the power humming with ferocity. Her wrath burned like a beacon, and above her, one who had searched for her for two nights and two days smiled coldly but also with a sense of relief.</p><p>The Hell-Queen heard the beating of wings and the jingle of iron around it, and saw a thing between woman and bat with great fangs descend from the skies, landing beside her.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Thuringwethil.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The vampire-queen smiled, her fangs visible and serrated.</p><p>
  <span class="u"><strong>Ilmare.</strong> </span>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>Why are you here?</strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <span class="u"><strong>She wishes to speak to you.</strong> </span>
</p><p>Ilmare froze.</p><p>
  <em>For these twelve days she had remained waiting, on the outer fringes of that realm hidden by the Traitor's shield, and in that time it had occurred to her the folly of all this. A war that scourged the world, the endless futility of the sword and destruction. And then, in her Fana of the Children's make, the night before, she had had a dream for what was to her the first time in her life but she realized it had not truly been. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was a dream of the old days, when her mistress was alone and had not yet drawn to her all her tribe and beyond, a third of all the Maiar. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In that day she walked with Olorin in the realms of the Earth in its first, paradisical form. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You have heard what Melian has said, have you not? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes, brother. She huffed, a sneer crossing her face. She's afraid the mightiest of the Valar after the Great King could be some sort of a monster. Have you seen that light of hers? It sings, brother. It sings. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It does not sing in kindness, sister. I have heard that music, yes. You know my feelings on this. Of her tribe might I be, but I have taken service with Nienna the Weeper, whose tears are stronger songs than the self-proclaimed Queen of the Starlight. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is no proclamation, brother. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>With that she raised her hand and Olorin looked up. Polaris, first of all stars, had formed, a work of Melian's and of the Star-Queen, part of those first Seven. In those days Ilmare had not yet fully chosen her. Soon the Music of the Spheres would become irresistible, but it was as she looked at Polaris and closed the eyes of her Fana, the music singing into her, with her, and all around her that Olorin looked on her in troubled elements, and somehow, with her eyes closed, the her in the dream knew this. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The Music of the Spheres intensified, starlight upon starlight building, and those of the children of the Vardarin in the Ardan portion of Ea, all began to move to the stars, drawn to work with and within them, and within the great power of the  Outer Light. Ilmare had gone there, on the making of the seventh, her hand holding her brother's wrist. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The spheres are our blood and our hearts, brother. I must go to them. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Olorin looked at her with tears in his eyes and said but one word in Valarin: </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>With that, to the stars did she go, and she stood next to the seventh of the Seven Sisters, Varda's Hook, that hung above the peoples of Arda as the first and the eldest of all her stars in her design. She looked with wonder and heard the music, but up close, what had seemed so far changed. The smell of blood and death and entrails and the sickly odor of decay in the void of space, these things entered her and she shuddered, falling on her knees in the emptiness of space. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>To her then came the Traitor, Melian, her face pale. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Tears were in her eyes as she looked at Ilmare. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>We are accursed, she murmured. We the Vardarin, tribe of the Stars. Ours the lot to make monsters that devour and thirst for terror, and to be damned by this. I cannot do this, Ilmare. I have made these seven, and with them my hands will be forever stained. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You came up here, you can go down with me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You would betray our lady? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Melian's finger pointed to the gleaming singing thing that was behind them both, its light casting shadows around the forms of their thought. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You hear it, it makes you ill to hear it. What Lady, what Vala, is worth such an abomination? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Ilmare closed her eyes and the bloody aura of the Music of the Spheres ringed her, and it intensified, seemed to take on a will and person. She was coming, the Elentari.</em>
</p><p><em>Come with me, Ilmare. Go back to Olorin. We....we can avoid this</em>.</p><p><em>No, no. If I</em> c<strong>ould I w</strong><em>ouldn't ha</em><strong>ve com</strong><em>e he</em><strong>re</strong>. <strong>Run, little traitor. Run. Flee</strong></p><p>
  <em>With the last words her voice shifted, its timbres becoming those of the Hell Queen, and as Varda's presence drew nigh, Melian returned to Arda clad in fire and smoke, landing before the Mahanxanar, where she begged pardon and pleaded for mercy, wailing and weeping. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was in this sense that Ilmare first looked upon the Star-Queen in the time of Ea, in the time after the Music of the Ainur. She had come to her in a form that was as dark as the night in outline, but that faded before the singing hue of starlight, and its arcs. She would be called Fanuilos in the gloss of her servants and those of her foes who wished a sardonic take on her nature, Ever-white, for hers was a light that gleamed with unhallowed power enough that only the outlines of her darkness showed she was a person at all. Before the Seven Sisters Varda became a giant, a colossus far larger than that which would descend on Arda greater than the greatest of Aule's works, and in the light of her eyes there was song and it was not a kind song. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The Ilmare who had been, whose shape had already slipped from the very first of the Music of the Spheres knew her first defeat then in the gleaming eyes of the Elentari's power she was spellbound. A creature spoke with lips of flame and teeth that glowed with the music of the stars and her words were indecipherable, not syllables so much as cosmic majesty and glory that forever altered her. She knelt, then, donning a form of her own thought, Hell-Queen then for the first in the long duration of all time.</em>
</p><p><strong>I shall serve you, my queen, to the fullest of my ability, in all things. Your glory is mine, henceforth and forever,, so ever shall it be</strong>.</p><p>
  <em>More words and she gleamed then with the light of stars, and knew their glory. It had started then, Olorin's tears and Varda's glory.</em>
</p><p>And now here she was, told by the Vampire-Queen to go back, after spending days skulking between the monster's lair, the Hidden Kingdom (at least where it was assumed to be, the Girdle was not yet able to be crossed but such a vast blank spot in fertile land was no true secret, merely shielded by the full weight of the Traitor's Power), and the forest she'd burned to ashes the stars drank into with greediness. Moving into a form of light streaking from the ruined forest, over the war's desolation. Burned bodies, broken buildings, the Eldar marching in ranks far more disciplined than at the start.</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>The Eldar sang and chanted, marching, as Himlad burned, and she flew over the bloodsoaked ground, her light casting shadows, singing in glory and in power, until she landed, Eldaband was growing, the work of the slaves delving it deeper and making its fortresses stronger. The most sophisticated and glorious of the captured Quendi were remade into new lords and lord-lineages among the Eldar, this by now a science and an art, glory and power and shadows echoing in the music of the spheres. She looked at it, at the Iron-Rivers she had crossed, iron dotted with corpses and bones of Elves, Dwarves, and Men.</p><p>Folly. Olorin had been right. This was what the Music had wrought. As terrible a thought as it was, she should have taken the traitor on her offer. Next to this, what was time in the company of the Valie of the Hearth, of the still and quiet home? Tears of fire streaked down her cheek, and she decided at that point, even as on her throne the Elentari's eyes flashed open and she moved in sudden speed.</p><p>Ilmare turned and moved in a floating column of light to the roof of Eldaband, and then to its spires. She could see it, there in the distance. The light of Aman, no longer truly hidden to the children of Varda. She wiped her tears. They had forgiven the Traitor and she had found......she was able to wield power, power only a little less than that of the Hell-Queen's. And power that was not sent into the wielding of their great light to make monsters.</p><p>She closed her eyes and began to wield herself to transform even as the starlight around the place shifted and the crystalline roof became transparent, light echoing and singing, as the light bound her again in a fana more like that of the flesh. Beneath her stood the Star-Queen whose eyes were glowing, and as the starlight intensified she struggled only to find in a burning and terrible reminder that no matter how great the power of the mightiest of the Maia, the Star-Queen, even as her power diminished by incarnation and madness was infinitely mightier still.</p><p>The roof of Eldaband closed.</p><p>A few captives stared as the starlight bound the Hell-Queen, who looked on the Star-Queen with fear. The eyes of the latter turned to them and with a snarl a few streams of fire consumed them, their souls sent to Mandos, and none else dared to stare as the Star-Queen's eyes flashed with light that grew the greater until the Hell-Queen was prostrate, murmurs for mercy echoing from her.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>You sought to  betray me as she did. In another realm it might have been Melian the Queen of the Isle of Werewolves. Or even Mairon, become Gorthaur the Cruel, for he is drawn to power in all truth. Melkor, in his view, had the greater and so he chose him. Mairon and Melian chose the Valar and their chains. You chose me. Now, you weary. Now, after the Burning. Now, after the infinite timespan you have been slaver and torturer and architect of all my deeds. Now, you think to go to my lesser kindred, to beg for mercy. Now, you must understand. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>A master of your own have you been for too long, you have forgotten that a queen of hell might you call yourself, but you are servant alone, a creature of mine, a beast of shadow. A part play you in all my designs, in works of flesh and devil, of sword and blood. A great part, even, for it is your work as much as mine, and deeds are there that you should be proud thereof, and grateful. Your deeds, your beautiful star-music. Mine the design, mine the steel, yours the hands that wielded it. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>There is no way back from this. Each and every star you have made and wrought in shadows is a thing of sentence against you. Each and every Quendi and Treefolk and Eagle and Maia broken by you is in your sentence. Too, each and every time you are here enough for all the rest, for all the deeds of your work and of your make....and then turn from them, to damn them when it is of my make, as though this will mean anything to those affected. We have in our own ways become slavers and lords of slavers. The new Second-Comers who are seeking to obey my will, for example. Of the stock of the Hadorians and the Beornings we have promised them. Do you think it would matter if it were my words in your mouth when it is your mouth that shapes them? </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>They would never pardon you, little Star-singer. You would go to them and then be punished by the very worst of all fates. The Doors of Night, from which it is said time and space are as no obstacle but where you are ever alone and lingering in shadows. Locked away beyond the walls of the world, until Last Battle and Day of Doom. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>They did not pardon the Traitor, little Star-singer. Este enslaved her and broke her to her will, made her crave the hearth-fire. Hence her debasing herself by letting herself, I believe, be whelped. My stars tell me in the hidden woods gleams from time to time hallowed starlight, akin to that of my jewels, the works and the thought of Feanor the Jewel-Maker. Not that of a gem, of a person, a being. The Traitor enthralled and yoked to a mortal, forced to whelp him offspring. You have shunned my touches, my caresses, for fear of what they might mean. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>And look then, little Star-Singer, on what the Valar have done to the Traitor. Whelped. Made a thing of the lusts of vermin, those Children of my Father's work that ape our presence and our very souls. That is the fate of her reward, of her renewal and of her release. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Suppose they did pardon you, my would be fugitive star-singer. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Perhaps to them, the Children, would you become wedded, not one, but many. It is their delight that the Children breed and put forth life, so to whelp the servants of the Star-Queen....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>The light burned more fiercely and those few Elves of Doriath who had left the Girdle in the wars and heard the seeming slurs against Melian remembered the flashes of Luthien's starlight and doubt burned in them. There was a horrible kindred in that energy relative to that of the light of the Nightingale, and in that fear there echoed other things, and greater things besides.</p><p>
  <em><strong>But they would never let you into Aman, let alone to repent, would-be fugitive.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that last lingering mockery and the cruel pretense of sadness, the Star-Queen grabbed Ilmare by her hair, and their eyes met again as her starlight blazed out, leaving the Maia to swoon in darkness before her throne, as the Star-Queen hurled her down to land with a terrifying boom.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Bring her to my chambers, I will teach her that there is only the starlight myself.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With looks of fear, the stern Eldar-Lords did, taking her in delicacy. When one's hand slipped 'accidentally' to clasp Ilmare's right breast the Star-Queen said nothing, seemingly, until they placed her on the bed, and then as he turned to look at her, she seemed to inhale, and then from her mouth erupted a column of fire that grew vertically and consumed him and left him ashes as the odor of burned flesh and broken bones pervaded the room. </p><p>With that, none but the Star-Queen knew what occurred within the chambers, and Ilmare herself. The Star-Queen casually burned away Ilmare's raiment, and in an assertion of strength flipped her on her back, the back displaying a pattern of terrible scarring from the edge of her skull to the small of her back in this, and in all her forms.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I burned you here, little star-singer, to teach you a lesson, once. You accepted it, then. But you have forgotten it. I won't have my servants thinking they are masters and forgetting who commands whom. Still-less will I allow you Melian's folly, to become as she has become, besotten with an animal, broken, believing herself loved and able to be loved.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that she flipped her around, and Ilmare was bound by ropes of starflame, looking at her in fear.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Worry not that you shall be claimed by me as they have done with her. There is but one for whom my eyes turn, him. My spouse. I do not share, not with or for him, or for any other. I do not need to do so simple a thing....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Her hand reached out to trace gently along the side of Ilmare's face, down her neck, past her chest, to her belly and right along her smooth midsection.</p><p>
  <em><strong>For such is the work of foolish, simple minds. Were it Melkor or the Wind-Lord who had fallen and not I, there is no doubt to me that it would be a thing of theirs. They are Earthy, of this realm, this foolish and squalid place. I am Starlight, I am the Stars and in my coming I brought images, things of my work to adorn and to dot the world, to ever and anon renew things even if some impossible fate takes me from mistress of all Arda to the Doors of Night. Starlight does not need so simple a thing as flesh.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She moved her hand that had slipped lower along Ilmare's belly, then stepped back and giggled, a sound that became a mad warbling-wail. a howl of power and of madness.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Well, there is the flesh of one.</strong> </em>
</p><p>And in a more giant form of starlight with that crown gleaming she knelt by Ilmare, her larger hand stroking her cheeks with a finger.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Manwenuz, my beloved, my husband. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, to whom I staked my claim before His throne. Father's.</strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>You are not him, nothing here is. There are none I could desire that are not him, not in this this sense. Not the simple carnal lust of the flesh. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>Father knew what I would become, and He sentenced you all to this fate, in my hands. In my power, and in my glory.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Varda seemed to compress, her starlight glowing more terrible and for one of the few times in her life, she truly was Fanuilos, a being of gleaming brilliant white hue, her hands gleaming with starlight as she raised them over Ilmare.</p><p>
  <em><strong>And you sought to betray Him and His design for you. He is no more forgiving than I, for such things. You're here, after all. </strong> </em>
</p><p>With that her starlight moved down and struck through the Fana, into the very Fea, the essence of what made the Hell-Queen herself. As the starlight neared it, Varda paused.</p><p>To her eyes, it seemed that her power had accrusted over the power of the Hell-Queen, that part of her was still the woman who ached to know her brother's love again, to be one among a kind less....changed.</p><p>A cold light blazed in the Star-Queen's eyes and a look of hate burned in them, and then from her hands gleamed a Starlight more powerful and brilliant and in that starlight she giggled and her giggles became a triumphant bellow.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I shall tear your soul apart!</strong> </em>
</p><p>And in that light the Hell-Queen's soul burned and with it remained to her but one last trace of who she was, and what she would be, a trace that would see her last punishment in time to come when Doriath would fall and the legacy of Melian remain in her family.</p><p>With that, the Star-Queen withdrew her hands and the being that curled on herself in the bed changed in gleaming hue. From a glowing kind of power that blazed with a bright light of gleaming white, she became a being like the magma of the Earth's blood, a being who burned with a terrible heat and was veined with lines of red, and her eyes gleamed with starlight.</p><p>Not long thereafter the Hell-Queen found herself awakened on her throne in Tor-ni-Muspelli, wondering if  all that had transpired had been a dream. To check this, she raised her hand, and in her hand there was a gleaming set of reddish veins of bright and reddish light. In that gleam she froze, and she sought to recall the form of her old friend's face, and his name. When blankness rose, she screamed in agony and pain at the loss of a nature she could not even bring herself to grasp the fullness of what was lost.</p><p>It was then that one of her Muspellir came to her and told her that a company of riders had reached the outskirts of her island. And that among them were not only Beren, son of Barahir, but Finrod Felagund, the King of Nargothrond himself, a mixed community of Quendi and of Men.</p><p>The snarl of rage that erupted from her throat at that name echoed thundered in the world around her, and in its peal the riders froze. Veins of star-fire erupted from holes in the ground and their mounts perished, and in the fumes so came Beren and Finrod and their company to her throneroom, where they would awaken.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Of Beren and Luthien:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>No tale became more famous among the Quendi in story and song than that of the love of Beren and Luthien. Each great Elven Bard did takes on the Lay of Leithian, and were one to do merely a volume of them one would end up with a work twice the size of the published Red Book. Beren son of Barahir and Luthien Tinuviel the half-Maia were  tied by love and fate and achieved a deed of wonder. From this deed came much sorrow, and yet for all that Unnumbered Tears followed the capture of the Silmaril and the cruelties of the House of Feanor when their dreadful Oath became active once more, it was the love and the person of Tinuviel that taught the Quendi lessons on simple fear and hate and the expansion of compassion. Too, of all the Tales, it endures most outside the Red Book as a tale told into the Hyborean Age, and into the dawn-age of modern humanity. A variant of it seems writ into the most ancient legends, more universal than the Deluge. </em>
</p><p><em>Against a being that was the full and uncontrolled power of starlight, that terrible singing soul-devouring fire that burns without end, who at her weakest was more powerful than any weapon known or theoretically possible, save in the wildest science fiction of modern times, and certainly to those possible in the laws of physics, against the innate draw of bloodline and its pull several times over, they won for love and for compassion its first great victory in the ancient myth cycle that was first among all things. It is a great story, the greatest of this cycle, and unlike the other Great Tales of the First Age, the Fall of Gondolin, the suffering of the doomed House of Thalion, and the War of Wrath itself, it is a story that has an ending more bitter than sweet in some ways, but where love and goodness triumph.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman</p><p>THE WOODS JUST OUTSIDE DORIATH:</p><p>Such was the power of Luthien Tinuviel that Beren, who had arrived splattered in the blood of monsters wielding a damaged and melted sword remained transfixed in her dance. When she moved on, his sword fell in silence in the forest and he followed her, entranced. The light of Tinuviel like that of her later descendant, Arwen Arien, glowed with a purity that was that of what the stars in another realm might have been. Yet to the Quendi, be they Noldor or Sindar, or to those who had seen and witnessed the power of the dreadful and warlike Hell-Queen, ever the faithful and gleeful servant of her mistress, or the Star-Kindler herself risen in power and in glory, such light itself was a thing of suspicion, if not fear and terror. For this reason, among others, Melian had asked that Luthien not let the light shine save within the walls of their own home.</p><p>Luthien then was a maiden, young and lovely and innocent. She did not understand her mother's request, or the fear honed by awareness of the attitudes of the Quendi that underlaid it. Her first lesson would come when the entranced Beren followed her and they encountered Daeron, who as a child had loved her until in trust she had let the light shine, and then he had left her with a face of pallor and said nothing. He had seen that light again, shining in the woods, and heard the blundering approach of one of the Engwar. And so he found her dancing and twirling, her light illuminating elements of the dress she wore, and a blood-spattered Engwa who had followed her with a face that was spellbound. What in youth had been love in adulthood, with suspicion of the origin of that late become hate. Hate, and fear. </p><p>It was in that mindset that he moved swiftly in that silence only native to the Quendi, and came to the palace of Thingol and Melian and told them in secret.</p><p>It was no less than Elu Thingol himself who appeared within a quarter-hour and spoke in sharp terms, her light dispelling and she became more fully aware of Beren in body and not just in soul.</p><p>Thingol's voice was cold and curt. "Come, son of Barahir, and tell me why you skulk in my woods as a vagabond."</p><p>With that both of them strode through the woods. Great had been the wrath of Thingol leavened with fear, and no less great was the fear in the eyes of Fae Melian, whose gifts were legion and so too her power, and it was said that of all the Maiar in Arda only she had attracted the special animosity of both Hell-Queen and the Star-Kindler for reasons unknown. Into the palace they came, and Beren, still covered in the blood, strode before the thrones where Thingol took his place while Luthien smiled at her parents warmly.</p><p>At Thingol's nod, Beren spoke with the greatest calm. "I have come by a hard road, King Greymantle. My father and all his company were slain by servants of the Hell-Queen in the woods of Dorothnion, and I made my way into the Nan Dungortheb and fought my way out again."</p><p>His face went pale and he shuddered. The mind of Thingol knew at one level respect for him that would increase with time but another still more fearful thought.</p><p>"I came to your woods, O King, in hope of safety and passage through the Girdle." He bowed deeply to Melian. "Your power is great, Queen. None, even the Star-Kindler of the North, could enter it against your will, and you have allowed me in. I thank you."</p><p>Thingol's next question was cold and curt: "Why were you staring at my daughter?"</p><p>"She was glowing, O King, with the fairest of all lights that ever was, or will ever be, or can ever hope to be."</p><p>Thingol and Melian both visibly started, and for a moment confusion crossed Tinuviel's face and a suspicion with Beren in secret was confirmed.</p><p>"I saw that beauty and I was struck that no fairer a woman in all Arda has ever existed or could ever exist. Were it your will, O King, I would ask for your daughter's hand."</p><p>Thingol's eyes widened.</p><p> "You would ask for her hand?" His voice was cold and yet inflections in words reflected the maelstrom churning behind his mask.</p><p>"Not to Men is it given to wed those among the Quendi."</p><p>"And yet, O King, I would ask it of you."</p><p>Thingol steepled his hands. "Very well, I ask of you a simple price. A Silmaril from the crown of the Star-Kindler."</p><p>Luthien froze and looked at her father in genuine shock, while Beren simply smiled with politeness. "For such little trinkets are such gifts beyond price given. A bauble on a band of iron. As you will it, King Greymantle, so then shall it be."</p><p>When he turned to leave, he bowed to Luthien in turn and she smiled warmly.</p><p>"Before you leave, son of Barahir, I would have words with you."</p><p>"As you will it, O King."</p><p>With that he stepped from the throneroom. It was then that Thingol ordered the courtiers out and descended to Luthien, wrath on his face and Luthien stared, uncomprehendingly.</p><p>"I warned you not to let that light out," he hissed. "You don't know what it is, and there are reasons for that. Daeron saw it, and he wanted me to have you put to the question as a witch. Your mother and I know and none would dare cross Melian in her own realm, still less than would cross me. You have endangered the life of this Man, and in that, perhaps you shall learn that when your mother and I forbid you things, we do not do it from spitefulness but from wisdom."</p><p>"It is not a bad light, you have always told me this," she said quietly, subdued.</p><p>"It is a light that would seem as that of the Star-Kindler, daughter," spoke Melian with her voice soft yet carrying a steel beyond that of Thingol.</p><p>"The demon of the North? My light doesn't sing, it doesn't thirst for skulls or souls or blood. It gives hope. How can it be like hers?" </p><p>"There are answers to that question, my daughter, that I hope you never discover. I do not agree with the wisdom of my husband's course but it is the one he has chosen. Fate wills as it shall, and we must simply accept the Weaver's weave."</p><p>The next morning, given a fine horse of Thingol's own stable, Beren son of Barahir was greeted by the King himself in the stable.</p><p>"I will warn you now that there are reasons you are sent on this quest. If you should come to the sight of the Star-Queen or the Hell-Queen you will understand that truth. If, in understanding it, you still seek her hand, there may be other words."</p><p>"You asked me for a Silmaril, O King. I shall seek to honor my word."</p><p>Thingol looked, quietly, and placed his hand on Beren's shoulder in a gesture of strange affection and honor, and then went off.</p><p>Beren rode out, Luthien's eyes catching him from the city.</p><p>Unknown to him in Nargothrond, a dream of Lorien's had come to Felagund, who had taken with him a mixture of Hadorian and Beorning Men, and two of his own Elven guard. To Orodreth who had been overcome by the Hell-Queen did he bestow Nargothrond in title, and in the time of his governance of the city in fact, becoming its King in name meant that only a few troublemakers among Men, Elves, and Dwarves dared mention the loss of Tol Sirion. Even then it was with an awareness that he had not lost it to some mere strutting Eldar War-Boss but to no less than the mightiest of all Maiar, whom he had faced in person, she who had humbled Mairon and Eonwe themselves.</p><p>With this, it did not take long for the fleet-footed steeds of the Quendi to catch up to Beren, son of Barahir, who had just passed from Doriath and Melian's girdle. He had not expected an escort, let alone that of Felagund and his allies, and he welcomed the reinforcements with no amount of relief. Quiet words were spoken lost to story and to time and to the endless speculation of bard and historian alike. Yet no truth can there be found in the various iterations, and often even the most stoic historians were at their most poetic. All that is known is that twenty Men and three Elves rode forth, brushing the edge of the forest, where they rode more quietly and cautiously.</p><p>For a time, and this had drawn the full arts of the Feanorians to shield both Doriath and the frontiers of Nargothrond, she had waited there between the woods and the Vale of Shadows. A figure of hellish light with sword of fire, and one that not even the Feanorians would have dared confront directly.</p><p>The Hell-Queen was not there, and so with greater confidence they rode past the Iron River to the edge of what had been Hithlum, seeking to take a path known to be less guarded, for the Hell-Queen had not been seen at the seat of her power in some time. Five days they rode, sleeping under rocks and in caves with their horses tied at the edges, with blinders to shield them from any untoward glimpse of starlight. Then they came to it. Tor Ni Muspellir, the dismal place that had been Orodreth's tower and now burned with the heat of the Star-Queen's song.</p><p>A peal of something very like thunder echoed around them, and yet thought it was as thunder too it seemed to be as a snarl. Rivers of fire suddenly pulsed out and cast shimmers and fumes, and in those fumes their mounts perished and they fell before them. Eldar strode out, clad in the strange kind of armor the Star-Kindler had made that standard of her troops and grasped them. So they were brought into a shining domed room that gleamed with bright lights, a strange heat and droning song echoing with stunning power. There was a throne set in place and she who sat upon it was clad in breeches of leather and a breastplate of star-metal, carrying in her right hand a thing simultaneously scepter and spear. The light of her eyes was fearful.</p><p>It had been Finrod's will and design that each of the men was veiled with an appearance that made them seem other than they were reputed to be, though none could disguise the horses of Doriath's make shielded by Melian's power. That and the skill of the rider led the Hell-Queen to suspect though she could not prove, the identity of her captives. To them the Hell-Queen was superlatively beautiful, more like light wrought into the form of the Children than not. Her eyes were small suns brighter than the rest of her and in that starlight and its song even the Men gazed as blankly as the Elves. A smile crossed her face and she descended from her throne, using her spear-staff in a sense quite visibly as support, in others not.</p><p>So then began a contest, of power and of majesty, between the disguised Finrod Felagund and the Hell-Queen of the Muspellir.</p><p>
  <em>She chanted a song of wizardry,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Of piercing, opening, of treachery,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Revealing, uncovering, betraying.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Then sudden Felagund there swaying</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Sang in answer a song of staying,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Resisting, battling against power,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Of secrets kept, strength like a tower,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And trust unbroken, freedom, escape;</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Of changing and of shifting shape,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Of snares eluded, broken traps,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The prison opening, the chain that snaps.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Backwards and forwards swayed their song.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Reeling and foundering, as ever more strong</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The chanting swelled, Felagund fought,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And all the magic and might he brought</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Of Elvenesse into his words.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Softly in the gloom they heard the birds</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Singing afar in Nargothrond,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The sighing of the sea beyond,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Beyond the western world, on sand,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>On sand of pearls in Elvenland.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Then the gloom gathered; darkness growing</em>
  <br/>
  <em>In Valinor, the red blood flowing</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Beside the Sea, where the Noldor slew</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The Foamriders, and stealing drew</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Their white ships with their white sails</em>
  <br/>
  <em>From lamplit havens. The wind wails,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The wolf howls. The ravens flee.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The ice mutters in the mouths of the Sea.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>The captives sad in Angband mourn.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Thunder rumbles, the fires burn –</em>
  <br/>
  <em>And Finrod fell before the throne.</em>
</p><p>Ilmare smiled, the power of the Quendi lord humbled. </p><p>
  <em><strong>Valiantly did he strive, you who rode to my halls like thieves seeking to evade a march-warden.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She snapped her fingers. The gleaming face was marked by a sneer that cast a pall of haughtiness and ugliness alike upon it.</p><p>
  <em><strong>So much for valor. Take them to the dungeons.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The Eldar complied, and in that dungeon they encountered Draugluin and two of its whelps, which began to devour them one by one, and they did not devour them quickly or kindly. The Hell-Queen would come to see them and to watch with relish the hunger of the Wolves. A bird flitted at the window and then flew to Doriath, empowered by the Weaver's warp and weft, and in that chirping Luthien heard of the distress of Beren. So she sought to go rescue him only for Daeron to tell her father, who sealed her in the highest room of the tallest tower of his palace, one perilously near the canopy. A room of punishment for in clear nights those who dwelt there saw the starlight and heard its nightly chorus.</p><p>With calmness Luthien let herself tap for the first time into her gifts as one of the Ainur and their heritage and her hair grew and grew and grew, until it flowed like a river of night to the bottom of the forest. Then, content, she took a gleam of carefully manipulated light and cut it neatly, her hair tapering in a u-fashion around her head thereafter, longer before her face and short at the edge. Down the river of night she flowed, and in swiftness enhanced by that power did she steal from the woods of Doriath. Even to her kin the Girdle was a thing that left her awed Beren had felt so little effect from it. So much so, in truth, that it meant her light gleamed with a glow of brilliant bright blue that cast a miniature dawn in the shadowlands where the frontier of Doriath and Nargothrond meshed. She remained shaken, trying to toss off her uncertainty when two riders approached. Celegorm and Curufin, twin sons of Feanor. Now march-wardens of Doriath, their realms laid waste in the Burning.</p><p>They had seen her light, too, and they in turn took her captive. She heard the bulkier and stouter of the two, Celegorm, murmuring "Starlight-witch. We'll burn this one at the stake and no mistake."</p><p>From the highest room in the tallest tower of a palace to a dungeon cell just at the edge of the dirt, and in the captivity of two to whom she dared not speak her quest, knowing all too well of the oath and the ill repute the family held with it. Before her slept a hound, a being of Valinor. Some said he was Maia that had taken hound-form, other that he retained the pure blood of the creatures of the Undying Elf-Home, but it mattered not. Thrice would Huan speak in his time and he was fated to be slain by the mightiest of all the dread Star-Wolves of the Star-Kindler.</p><p>She spoke to him in quietness and the hound listened, and when a night came that was clouded and the sons of Feanor were riding far away in the east at an edge of their patrols on behalf of the Kingdom of Nargothrond, her light blazed forth. She struck with her light, reaching out to the bars on her dungeon and the bars became molten, and dissolved, and Huan reached down to her, and she climbed on his back. For the first time did Huan speak:</p><p>
  <em>Swiftly now, we must go.</em>
</p><p>With speed did they move, and the night was with them, for it was starless. The sons of Feanor found her gone two nigts later upon their return, and the bars melted, and were as grateful as not that they had not tried to burn her after all, fearing the fire might have strengthened the witch.</p><p>THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE ISLE OF MUSPELL:</p><p>The third night they arrived at the isle, and it was with caution and stealth that they came. Yet caution and stealth were not fully enough, for it was then that a creature, a vampire, swooped down from the sky and landed in front of them. Bat-like with great fangs and eyes that gleamed with starlight, it spoke in a low and seductive voice.</p><p>
  <span class="u">
    <em>An Elf riding a hound? Already half-Eldar you are. This is not a place of pleasure-excursion, little thieves. Depart now. And I will make the chase fair by giving you a head start. </em>
  </span>
</p><p>Yet Luthien stood up and raised a sword she had found on the trace of a battlefield in their flight, taken from the bones of an Elf. In her gleamed her holy starlight and Thuringwethil stood back and placed her hands in front of her eyes and shrieked in agony, as Luthien dismounted from Huan who surged at the shrieking vampire and worried at her throat. Vainly did she seek to claw the hound but the Hound of Valinor could not be overcome by but save one, and her claws shattered on his hide. With that Luthien bent and took her knife and flayed the creature, starlight gleaming and she studiously ignored that even the pure starlight seemed to relish the shedding of blood though Huan did not, and could not.</p><p>Swift had this confrontation been, for mighty  a Maia as the Vampire-Queen was in her own fashion, against fate and a daughter of Melian and the Hound of Valinor she was as snow before the summer sun.</p><p>THE DUNGEON OF THE ISLE OF MUSPELL:</p><p>Only a few of them remained now. Two of the Men, including Beren himself, and Finrod Felagund. Ever quiet had they kept their identities even as the deaths of their companions echoed, and even as the light of the Hell-Queen sought to find a way to dispel their glamours. The night that Luthien would arrive at the isle, there to confront the bat-winged Thuringwethil and to overcome her, which registered only dimly to the Hell-Queen, she found her means to shatter it with a new kind of starlight that gleamed, and in that cracking sound like ice she stood before them.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Ah, the Friend of Men.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that she strode to Felagund.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I think my Mistress wanted you to become an Elda, but I will not give you so unkind a fate.</strong> </em>
</p><p>A small gleam of starlight formed in her hand and she placed it on Felagund's forehead.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Burn.</strong> </em>
</p><p>And so he did, and as the odor pervaded the room she turned to Beren son of Barahir. She was gleaming now, the starlight of her presence echoing with that droning, now lower and more of an endless bass resonance with seeming brass in it. It was a sound that rattled bones, the rotted corpses around him providing a kind of accompaniment to that power. The light gleamed brilliantly and in it, Beren did grasp instantly that lesson that Thingol sought to show him. Yet determination marked his face. Fell might her light be, but that of Tinuviel was a blessing.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>For you, I suffered, little human. For you. I failed to capture you and my mistress broke me, honed me into a new kind of weapon to suit her ends. You smell of Doriath, and of its daughter still. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>Do you know what she is, little human? Do you know what she really is? What the Traitor is?</strong> </em>
</p><p>Beren refused to look at her further, his eyes shut and jaw clenched, and Ilmare snorted, removing her breastplate and her tunic, baring herself above the waist, turning around. </p><p>With a word of Power snarled that drew his eyes open and to her bare back, he stared in blank horror at the carbonized ruin that spread in rivers and jagged edges from what he could see of her neck to the small of her back. A pair of bones that seemed, improbably, like elements of a spine that was not human gleamed likewise.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Look, human, see the handiwork your valor earns. This is the punishment for the servants of the Star-Kindler when we fail. Behold the reward of heroes.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that she turned around, still un self-conscious of her form  and its garb and made herself appear vaguely as one of the children, if far too pale and her back clearly a carbonized ruin of charred tissue with parts of her spine visible. The form was hauntingly beautiful and for all his love of Luthien Beren could not resist the glance.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I see now why my Mistress does what she will, with threats like this. Your little toy you wish to claim, the half-breed? Her mother is the Traitor, Melian, who made the first seven stars and fled like the coward she is, and has always been, fled and was rewarded with kingdom and the most beautiful of all daughters.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She was next to him now, a burst of flame from her hands burning the man on his left alive, leaving only Beren left in the dungeon.</p><p>A cold howl echoed above, Draugluin. Whatever drove that would perish soon enough. Either that, or he was refusing to let Thuringwethil have the kill all to herself again and she would need to separate them soon. It mattered not. </p><p>THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE PALAC</p><p>From the fall of the monster that flew came one on four legs. Draugluin the Blue-Wolf, father of all the Star-Wolves. His eyes gleamed with a terrible fire and he hurled himself at Huan with frothing at the mouth and roars of wrath that were not those of a wolf. In fury did the Hound and the Wolf clash, a speed faster than any save Nessa could have tracked. Snarls and spurting blood and fur, and in a surprisingly quick time, Draugluin too lay still and unmoving.</p><p>Again Luthien took her knife and knelt and her light seemed to gleam with the shedding of blood, and the flayed hide of Draugluin lay beneath her, the beast's Fea cast with that of its compatriot into whatever realm Mandos or Nienna held the souls of the unlamented evil dead.</p><p>Now Luthien took the van and her light gleamed with hallowed power and before it quailed the Eldar and the captives looked in fear and wariness and hostility. She did not care. The dungeon, Beren. This was her goal. This is where she must go.</p><p>THE DUNGEON:</p><p>
  <em><strong>Little human, the Traitor was rewarded for her treason with a daughter, and the pleasures of the flesh. My Mistress and I are superior to the design of the Allfather for those of our order, and so have we become. In that sense, I will tell you that there is no true desire in this, merely the attempt to ensure that the Traitor and the Traitor's whelp shall not be given unhindered that which was never their due in the nature of all that is or will be.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that she leaned down and pressed her lips against Beren's, kissing him deeply and with a sense of skill greater than any, her fires blazing from her and leaving a mark on his right pectoral, the sigil of the Hell-Queen. With that the flames ebbed and her hand began to slip only for her to sense somehow, impossibly, that that which had sought to test her had overcome both Thuringwethil and Draugluin alike. Resting her hand just above his hip, Ilmare kissed him once more, whispering into his ear seductively:</p><p>
  <em><strong>Let me handle whatever that is and we will finish, later. And fully. I shan't be long.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her tunic and her breastplate were on her with a thought and with her spear-staff Ilmare stormed north, arriving at the edge of her dungeon. Two figures, one Quendi and gleaming with the light of the Traitor, the other the hound.</p><p>
  <em><strong>A traitor's whelp and a son of a bitch. Such sterling exemplars do the Valar send to do their work.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Traitor?" The little half breed's question displayed irritation mixed with wariness, and a slight tremor of fear. Keeping her light dimmed for the moment, Ilmare bared her teeth in a horrid grimace.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Your mother, darling. Melian. Has she never told you of the Ainur? We are tribes, little half-breed, tribes. Each of the Valar and the Valier has a tribe of spirits akin to them, those that followed them here. Of them, I am greatest, my brother in the thought of his Vala Eonwe second, Mairon third. And your mother fourth. Of us, Eonwe is of the tribe of Sulimo, Mairon of Aule, I and your mother the Traitor of the Star-Kindler.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Lies!" Now the little half-breed was enraged. She admitted that the human had taste, given the way her power that was caged was beginning to boil outward.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Are they? Your light is not so different to mine.</strong> </em>
</p><p>And with that her skin transformed from the bone-pallor of her more mortal shape to a brilliant hue that sang and resounded with the full power of starlight. With it, Luthien gazed in concern, for parallel there was. What with her was genteel and kind with the Star-Kindler's monster sang and echoed with power, yet they were of a kind. Luthien's eyes narrowed, and then her own Ainur senses detected......</p><p><strong>Beren</strong>, she spoke for the first time in Ainur-speech. <strong>You smell of him. Of his flesh.</strong></p><p>
  <strong><em>He didn't tell you? He welcomed my embrace, and has shunned you. If he would have the power of the Star-Kindler it would not be so unhallowed a beast as a half-breed spawn of a Quendi, it would be a pure-blood and no less than the mightiest of all Maiar. Loyal, not a Traitor.</em> </strong>
</p><p><strong>Lies</strong>, she hissed at a much lower level and one full of menace. Ilmare simply cocked her head and shook it with scorn.</p><p>
  <em><strong>No, it is the truth. And your power is that of a half-breed. Mine the power and the glory of the holy one, blessed be she!</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that her starlight suddenly blazed out more brightly with a ferocious gleam that cast Luthien to her knees, for as mighty as Luthien was, at one level she was at the end of all things, merely the most powerful of all the order of the Quendi. Against the mightiest of the Maiar, whose torn soul bled and gave her the raw strength and vigor of hatred, that might was very little, and the light burned still more brightly and as Luthien began to smell not only her raiment singing but her hair and even her flesh, she gasped and rolled to the side, looking at Huan in desperation.</p><p>With that Huan hurled himself at her as Ilmare laughed, long and cold, and moved her spear-scepter to block him.</p><p>
  <em><strong>He is said to die at the hand of the greatest of the Star-Wolves. Ridiculous. Everything burns.</strong> </em>
</p><p>And yet, to her stunned shock, her fire blazed outward and halted against the power of the Hound. For the first time she perceived how immensely powerful the Weaver could be, and resorted to fires that burned and sang with greater heat, eventually taking on the form of a great wolf whose fur blazed and sang with starlight, a wolf that seemed a wolf in form illuminated by the path of starlight that moved as muscles and fur moved with eyes of burning brilliant light. None of it availed her and Huan cast her down and worried at her throat, before Luthien told him:</p><p>
  <strong>Let her go, Huan.</strong>
</p><p>With that he complied, muzzle once again stained with blood.</p><p>Luthien stood, parts of her dress burned and charred and her flesh with it, and her power among the Ainur blazed to one of its greatest heights. The pure light burned Ilmare's eyes and she feebly hid her eye and muzzle with a paw.</p><p><strong>I shall cast you down heedless of your raiment and send your soul to the eyes of your Mistress to walk unclad, to know her scorn and the light of her music, unless you yield to me mastery of your tower and your realm. My light may be of your kindred, and if so, I shall remind you of another thing. Be it clean or be it unholy, starlight is fire. And fire burns. Even you. </strong>As she had been burned, the fur of the monster singed and smoked and in a gasped strangle Ilmare gleamed. </p><p>Ilmare shifted to her more humanoid form, bleeding from the neck, and bleeding profusely. Her knuckles and her brow were burned, her right lip burned clean away, exposing her teeth.  She choked out:</p><p>
  <em><strong>I yield!</strong> </em>
</p><p>In the form of a bat-winged creature of gleaming hue she flew to the north and then seemed to vanish.</p><p>Luthien, now mistress of the Isle, took to herself Ilmare's scepter and her light blazed and seemed to reshape the metal. In wonder did Huan look, as she raised the scepter-staff and then slammed it into the ground and with the impact the Hell-Queen's fortress was unmade, the captors freed, the Eldar fleeing in all directions, and to the dungeon that was now bare beneath the gaze and heat of the sun she strode. She found Beren in the midst of burned and gnawed corpses, unable to resist weeping for them, and then went to him, cutting him free with a knife.</p><p>For a time they rested in the Isle, Huan bringing them the raiment of Draugluin and Thuringwethil, and she looked at the scar burned into Beren.</p><p>"She lied to me, didn't she?"</p><p>Beren simply nodded, face stiff, and she put her hand to him and summoned the power of the Ainur. The scar ceased to pain him thereafter, but would linger and recur from time to time in their lineage and their descendants as a birthmark, often that associated with the greatest of the lineage, and always a thing of foreboding and trembling. After three days and three nights they set out again, Luthien weaving around them the forms of the vampire and the werewolf. In speed did they move, and then, by the arts and by the cunning work woven into their form they arrived at the gates of Angband.</p><p>The guard had vanished, unknown to them, as Varda in visible concern had sent them to find the bleeding Ilmare, and to bring her to them. Down they would stride, down. Into the palace that glowed with starlight and hummed and thrummed with its dreadful song. Monsters ringed them, many horrible things, and there was a dim glimpse in starlight of something fledgling and young that gibbered in a voice like a bell, each of its three heads illuminated only by shadows. They refused to look upon these things, and came before the very throne itself, and she who sat upon it.</p><p>Not yet weakened as she would be by the time of the War of Wrath, the Star-Kindler was a fearsome figure to behold. Her form seemed whispy in some elements but glowed with stunning power and thrummed with the star-chorus in others, darkness at the outer edges that was defined not by the night but by the starlight that duplicated elements of of mortal form. She was not clad as most of the Valar were, for her form revealed little of a truly mortal form, the starlight that gleamed and gibbered and sang her clothing and her power and her glory. On her head was a great crown and in that crown gleamed the three Silmarilli.</p><p>She was fearsome, she was splendid. In her it was clear how all evil in the world and in Ea itself echoed with the light of her stars, and in the light of her eyes there was a terrible glow.</p><p>
  <strong><em>You have come last, daughter of the Traitor, come to my domain and to its beating heart.</em> </strong>
</p><p>"She said that, too." Luthien's voice was hostile, intermixed with fear and with resignation.</p><p>
  <em><strong>My Hell-Queen? Yes, she would have. I told her....things...when last I disciplined her. She is mine to harm, little traitor hidden in such garments, who comes in the flayed hide of my servants like a thief in the night. The night has always been mine, Nightingale. Nothing here is invisible to my sight.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Then her right hand moved and the starlight burned away their cloaks.</p><p>
  <em><strong>The son of Barahir is with you. Good. Then he, so besotten with you, can simply take in fullness what he has known in part. Your blood is my blood, Nightingale. Your flesh is my flesh. Your mother it was who hung my Blade above the skies, in my design before she was overcome by weakness and went down as the Hell-Queen went up. A trade for a trade, fourth of the Maiar and their order for the first.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She leaned forward, the gleam of her eyes burning still more brilliantly, all that was Elven in Tinuviel demanding obedience. Yet that which was Ainur rose and it rose in defiance, and the chains that the Star-Queen wished to fashion did not cohere. Displeased at even so limited a failure she drew back.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Your mother is of my blood,  as I have told you. No doubt your parents were they wise would have told you to hide that light. No doubt any who were mortal who saw it reacted with fear and trembling and well that they would. Starlight is starlight, though yours is the lesser. Your blood cries out to serve me, child. Kneel, kneel, and know my service.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her power surged out and the starlight-song grew, not bass and resonant with brass but an ethereal kind of howling bedlam that was nonetheless of loveliness most unclean, but Luthien let herself let her own light shine and in the fullness of the starlight the simple light of what the stars could have been gleamed, and in it grew a small glimpse of the old light of Telperion. Here as in Valinor the light of the Silver Tree blazed with a power sufficient to negate Varda's song and she drew back, looking at her more keenly.</p><p>
  <strong>I offer you a dance, Star-Kindler. Not service. I have come to look upon your face and it is fairest of them all, and I will honor it, honor you, with a dance.</strong>
</p><p>At this, the monstrous Stat-Wolf by her side looked up, keenly, suspecting something of a trap. In that suspicion it bounded from the dais next to the throne and moved to the doors, where it paused, a cynical smile on its face.</p><p>With this she began her second greatest of all her labors, for there would be but one greater. From her dance moved soothing magic, and one by one the servants of Angband fell into slumber. The beauty was such that even the Star-Kindler and her gleaming power fell into that trance, and even as her servants fell asleep, she could not stop watching the nightingale dancing with light following her, a light-dance her eyes and her head with small micro-movements could not but follow in the greatest of all things. </p><p>At last even she slumbered and in that slumber her starlight dimmed and her form became that of a woman, briefly the Varda who could have been, illuminated not by unhallowed starlight but the glow that Luthien had called. She slumped forward, exhausted, but Beren climbed the unconscious form of the giant, and with the knife that had cut his shackles cut the right Silmaril from the very crown of the Star-Queen, and placed it within a pouch that had been pilfered from the Hell-Queen's palace. Yet such was the power of the Silmarils that even he, one of the most selfless and the greatest of all Ardan heroes could not resist an attempt to try to take a second, yet the blade shattered and it left a small scar on Varda's right cheek and a musical moan of pain echoed from her lips.</p><p>Grasping immediately that he had come too near to overplaying his luck altogether, Beren son of Barahir and Luthien Tinuviel fled in silence, and came to the door. The wolf lay before them unconscious, at first, but then stirred and it snarled, its red mouth that gleamed with bloody light the origin of the name whereafter it became known. Carcharoth.</p><p>Before it he held the Silmaril, hallowed by the will of the Allfather himself, but the creature smiled a smile that did not belong on the face of a wolf and bit down, Beren's hand vanished into its gullet. Yet the foulness of its form did not permit a hallowed thing like a Silmaril within its entrails, and the Silmaril began to burn it with a deadly heat. Howling in pain it burst open the gates and fled, and its howl awakened the court of the Star-Queen, that surged into activity and pursuit.</p><p>For the second of times Huan spoke:</p><p>
  <em>Now we run.</em>
</p><p>With Beren clinging to him and Luthien to Beren Huan sped, his speed slow only to storied Nessa, and outpaced all that would pursue and seek to pursue him. In speed and ferocity they moved past the territory of Celegorm and Curufin. In speed and ferocity did they cross the Girdle. In speed and ferocity did they reach the very capital of great Doriath itself, Menegroth, and only then did Huan move slowly. In this sense Beren's second arrival into the city mirrored his first, save that now it was his own blood that spattered his clothing.</p><p>With that they dismounted, facing Fae Melian and glowing-eyed Thingol, as Thingol spoke.</p><p>"You have brought my daughter. Where is the Silmaril."</p><p>Beren, face pallid, bowed stiffly. "Even now it is in my hand."</p><p>"Show me."</p><p>With that Beren moved the stump of his left hand, and Thingol's glow became that of his normal eyes and his expression softened.</p><p>For a night and a day did they prepare for the next great deed of the quest of the Silmaril. From the Anfauglith had come a monster, a towering thing the size of a small hill. A terrible fire burned in its gullet and it motivated the beast to lash out in great pain, storming around and laying waste to more of the outer fringes of Nargothrond and Doriath. Even one of the elder spawn of the creature Ungoliant was not safe, slain with great and merciless terror. Its corpse near the exterior of Doriath, legs tossed apart and parts of the body discarded and horrible, was left rotting just outside the girdle, the footprints of an enormous wolf around it.</p><p>With them went Beleg Cuthalion, hero of great wars. He who had served before the coming of the Noldor and distinguished himself in wars fought, though unknowingly, against the Hell-Queen herself. Others in the ranks distinguished in deeds but lost to years and the ravages of time, Beren, now Beren Erchamion, that is one-handed, and Huan. The creature was drinking from a river when they came upon it from the side of a mountain peak. Great did Huan seem to swell in size, until he matched the terrible wolf that was not a wolf, for no wolf had hands that were that akin to that of the Children nor flesh that glowed at points with veins of starlight, the beast turning to face Huan and roaring.</p><p>As iwth the clash with Draugluin the speed of confrontation between Hound and Wolf could not be fully tracked, the wolf all the same taking time to snap at the smaller riders around it. Elves and their horses fell to their deaths or worse into its maw. Its teeth sheared the legs from the steed of Beren and ripped into his side and his leg, infecting him with the monster's venom. The time taken for that had given Huan the chance to reach for its throat, the two parted after a clash that in the eyes of mortal and of Quendi had taken but a short span of time and yet had stretched out for longer, blood sheening them both. Deeply did Huan bite, even as the hand-like paws of the wolf ripped into his belly with a savage ferocity that exposed blood that hissed when it hit the ground. Yet the bite of Huan could not be gainsaid, and as he slunk, the wolf dead and its eyes gleaming, his eyes set on the wounded Beren, whose body had been shielded by that of his horse.</p><p>Farewell, son of Barahir. Before you my life was prelude and in your service and your quest I return to Mandos. Well-met, and well-lived.</p><p>Huan died, then, while Beren moved slowly and determinedly, and with Thingol they hewed open the belly of the wolf, and retrieved from it the gleaming Silmaril that illuminated the eyes of Thingol. The hand of Beren still held it yet when his hand brushed the right knuckle it blew away as dust in the wind. With it they rode, Beren clinging to Thingol, and his steed seemed to quite literally fly without the aid of wings, as if it were brought by the winds of Sulimo himself. The horse landed with grace, given a gentle landing that strengthened that impression and Luthien looked, stricken, at the pale and shuddering flesh of Beren, caring not at all for the gleaming Silmaril.</p><p>Great grief was there on her, and in that sense she laid her hands upon Beren Erchamion, and the light of her soul blazed as a star holy and brilliant, an offering of light to the Valar and attracting murmurs of intiial hostility and open fear that became reverence akin to that given one of the Ainur in their true form.</p><p>The light glowed as their spirits arrived at Mandos. That of Huan, who had heard the Doomsayer's judgment, that of Beren Erchamion, and that of Luthien, who in the boldness and desire of hers not to lose he who had suffered so much on her behalf strode to the Doomsayer in the fullness of the appearance of one of the Ainur, of the tribe of the Vardarin. Only her mother Melian in her true shape and Olorin of the Vardarin retained such hue in the Blessed Land, and that amplified by a song whose lyrics are known only to Mandos himself in his vast halls was a thing that was never seen before and would never be seen again. In beauty and splendor her song echoed, not just to Mandos himself, but in a realm outside all time and space, where the Allfather dwelt amidst seven lights and the thundering of drumbeats and the echoing drone of flutes.</p><p>THE TIMELESS HALLS:</p><p>Illuvatar Himself leaned forward and the light in His eyes was as nothing the Ainur could ever fully understand. His eyes closed and he listened to the song and its harmonics, the sad and beautiful rhythm one of the main elements of his Third music. In this, the true music of the spheres greater than anything she who had rebelled against him had sought to make, He nodded and His will was made known to Mandos. </p><p>Mandos spoke words to Luthien, words saved within the lineage of her family, that of Kemendros Tar-Minayur, founder of Westernesse of fabled Kull, he who was Ar-Pharazon, Master of Mankind, and of Kemendrond of Rivendell, that is Imladris. Words that promised that while not the only who were half-Elven, theirs were choices more special that most. Most among the Half-Elven were the Millennium-lived, the core of legends in king lists worldwide and in the Tanach's 'nine hundred and thirty years and then he died.' Yet only the house of Beren Erchamion and Luthien Tinuviel had direct blood of the Ainur loyal to Illuvatar (though it was rumored in later years that the more fiendish Dark Eldar were the product of horrid unions and the root of the legend of Nephilim). To them, to all in their lineage, would be given a choice. To pass beyond the walls of the world and the knowledge of Elves and Valar and Maiar and even the Void beyond the Doors of Night and to be accounted with men. Or to be accounted among the Quendi and to dwell in the Undying Lands as the world aged until the world was remade and the stars shone forth all as had been the true design of Illuvatar. The Telperion-like light that was the holy gift of the house of Luthien and Beren.</p><p>This bargain and this oath did Luthien and Beren swear and with tearful words they said farewell to Huan, and the glow of Luthien faded, as she awoke and so did Beren, hale and hearty save for his missing hand. Melian met the gaze of Luthien and quiet speech that was not that of words but of thought was exchanged, and the first of the two griefs of Melian echoed in that hour, a small chorus of grief echoing from the Seven Sisters in the power of their maker.</p><p>From there it is said that Beren and Luthien came to the last truly green isle in the frontiers of Doriath in the far north, Tar Galen, known as Avalon in later years and Tir Na Nog, the realm of Idunna, and other concepts of the ever-young. To Beren and Luthien was it given, as it would be to Aragorn and to Arwen Arien, to know death but not age, and to die old and ancient of years but in the vigor of youth. Not yet with them when they had gone there would the events of the Nauglamir come, that would only happen after the Unnumbered Tears and the valor and folly of the son of Hurin brought forth the fall of Nargothrond, and Hurin himself came and left a gift i rage and sorrow.</p><p>To them would be born a son, Dior, around whom ill fortune would weave, amplified by that of the Nauglamir and the ill weight of the Oath, that would snare with it the great Dwarven realm of Nogrod and lead to the Second Kinslaying. Yet Dior's childhood was happy and if his parents, with whom he dwelt in the Land of the Ever Young, knew of this they did not tell him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Of the Union of Maedhros and the Daughter of Varda, from the Quest of the Silmaril to the beginning of the Nirnaeth:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Quest of the Silmaril ripples outward among the free peoples and Maedhros proposes in a conclave of Noldor leaders the greatest league of all the Free Peoples. The wounded Ilmare Hell-Queen is found by Gothmog and taken to Varda Elentari, who works a great evil.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>THE THRONEROOM OF THE ELENTARI:</p><p>Varda's hands kept brushing the empty place that had held a gem at her crown like a mortal would pick with tongue and hand at something in their teeth. Her wrath blazed. She had been humiliated by a filthy half-breed, by the legacy of the Traitor. Something had happened to Ilmare, the prideful being whom she loved, insofar as a creature of her kind was capable of loving anything. The humiliation at the hands of the Traitor's spawn led her, however, to ponder even as she gave strict orders that the Hell-Queen be found, to a design of her own. They would come, after this, one last trial of strength. The servants of the Valar, the lickspittles of her father. Great strength she had delved on four monstrous weapons meant for a last resort, for in the War of the Burning and the slow and inexorable breaking of the power of the Quendi she knew there would be but one path. As one the Valar would come and they would seek to block her stars around the battlefield and gamble that they could break her in a last war and with the weakness she would have, so might it be.</p><p>Orders were given in wrath, but within, as she accepted a dream's death, a new one lit her soul with the hungry soul-drinking light of the stars. The Soulbroken would come, would be brought. And then the Soulbroken would be reforged and remade greater than any had dared. A vision to spite not merely her fellow Valar, but her father himself.</p><p>A COUPLE HUNDRED FEET FROM THE FORMER ISLE OF WEREWOLVES:</p><p>Ilmare lay on the ground, her light ebbing. She had fallen as a star fell, all burning and brilliant heat and the trees were scorched where she fell from death to ashes around her. Now she lay, her pulse ebbing with the light that had burned brightly. Mandos. His halls. She would go there after all and then face judgment. Perhaps to be cast beyond the doors and punished for her deeds. Eldar found her then, a troop of them. Of her elite. She heard their voices as sounds but did not understand their words. </p><p>"The Hell-Queen's dying."</p><p>"Yes, she is. Leave her be."</p><p>"You're insane. If the Star-Queen finds out..."</p><p>"She won't. We are but soldiers in her ranks. She deserves death for what she did to us, to the world. She deserves it, and she will reap all that she has sown."</p><p>The sergeant paused, a look casting a shadow across his face.</p><p>"Besides, after the ways the Star-Kindler's tortured her, a death like this would be more merciful than any punishment for losing that isle to a damned dog."</p><p>With that the company of Eldar parted, their image visible to Gothmog, the Maia perusing their minds and quietly noting their name and that of the lieutenant who greeted them and brought them to join the rest of the regiment. The Star-Queen's wrath to these Eldar would be a spectacle to behold.</p><p>He descended from the skies and saw Ilmare bleeding, her light dimming, and he shuddered for a moment. Maia were not meant to bleed out, but then Valie were not meant to have hands permanently blackened, cheeks scarred by dragon-claw and the trace of a broken thief's knife either. Nor feet scarred with wounds that did not heal and accounted for the Star-Queen's preference for the forms she took, the least painful to stand and walk upon. He looked at her with sorrow, she was too far gone to see him.</p><p>He knelt beside her, dimming his fires to be more a thing of smoke and shadow.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I'm sorry, Ilmare. If I had your freedom of thought, I would leave you here, and let you face whatever the Valar deem as your punishment. I do not.</strong> </em>
</p><p>He took her in his arms and she was limp and very light, and he moved himself not by flight but by thought, appearing in the throneroom.</p><p>The Star-Queen looked at Ilmare with genuine worry and fear, and brought her to her chambers with a surprising delicacy.</p><p>In those chambers she spoke words of Power and stilled the bloodflow from Ilmare's Fana, leaving her to slumber for a time and to rest. Her design would require her new daughter to be to be awake, for it would be a thing made more sweet by her words and pleas yielding to harsh fate.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>How did you find her? </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <strong>A troop of Eldar found her in the woods, great Star-Queen. They left her to die.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>Did you punish them? </em>
  </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>That is your writ, O Star-Queen. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong><em>Nonsense, Gothmog. It is the discipline of an army to preserve the authority of  its officers. You knew they left her to die, and you did nothing. You have endangered her, yourself, all of them.</em> </strong>
</p><p>She looked at him.<em><strong> I have sent a mental summons to that regiment. After I have given my daughter her new family and kindred, you shall be reminded that you are not immune to punishment for insubordination yourself.</strong> </em></p><p>Unknowing, and unsuspecting, the regiment filed in to her throneroom within the hour. They were there at a Star-Queen whose crown was now adorned with two Silmarilli, and the light in her eyes was great and grim.</p><p>
  <strong><em>You left my first lieutenant to die. You are traitors as much as she who is still hidden in Doriath.</em> </strong>
</p><p>With that she rose to her feet and kindled flame and an entire regiment of her Eldar were smote to ashes in a flash of starlight, a sudden booming note that heralded the flash and their death leaving after-echoes. She resumed her seat. Ilmare would be given two nights more to sleep, for grievous had been her wounds and even Ainu-flesh could not readily repair such damage.</p><p>On the morning of the third day she awoke, her eyes meeting that of the Star-Queen, and her fear was palpable.</p><p>
  <em><strong>The Traitor-whelp that came to my throneroom humbled me too, daughter.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Ilmare's eyes narrowed. Daughter? Ainur could only have children if they were incarnate and wedded to a mortal. Ainu were linked in ways more intimate than that of childhood, and their grasp of pleasure and sensuality beyond that of the merely mechanical of the flesh-things they had made. Why was she-</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>They will all fall, these Elven-realms. The whelp of Doriath has shown me that the kingdom is there, hidden behind a veil. In her coming and her theft of my gem she has begun the counting down of the doomsday clock. Too, the children of the Quendi and of the so-called Free Peoples shall raise a great legion, one last throw of the dice. I have made wonders, O child of mine, and I shall unleash one of them, to test a concept, and to see what if anything it unleashes. It shall leave no survivors and no tales told for the Valar to hear, for none who endure shall know what there is to know. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Five of my beasts, and the one that shall go is my Hydra, father of the Star-Dragons. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>And then what? Their cities shall be laid waste and Namo's little dirge come fulfilled, and my siblings estranged across the sea shall let me endure as ruler of all Arda forever? No. Even if none find a way to the West beyond the Ban they will find a loophole, or an excuse. Or simply decide to do things themselves against me and not in aid of the Quendi. They will come for me and they are all strong, not shackled in realms of flesh and fire. My five beasts have at last begun to tap into the power that I once wielded, but even at my weakest, I am the stars. And stars burn, O daughter mine. They burn into the realm of infinity. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>She too may come, the Dancer. She who is faster than my starlight and strong as him who remains unwed yet entrothed. I do not think they shall wed in full until I am beyond the Doors, so in that I have had a small measure of revenge. For long shall he have waited, long enough that legacies of my stories may call into question their desire and faithfulness even when to remain so patient for so long there is more in it than the normal state among we Ainur.</strong> <strong>Even if the Dancer should humble me again, my stars shall ever burn and ever sing. And in you, O daughter-mine, I have made the greatest of all my legacies that ever were, or will ever be. I tore your soul to join ours. I did not need to grant you the pleasure I would have shown Manwe, not like that. Not to bind souls. We are daughter and mother, Erinti-dearest. The children I could have had with Manwenuz will never be. But you are, and have always been. The Hound tried to take my daughter from me but my wolf gave him his.</strong></em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>And in this, as I raise my hands to you, you will realize that to fear defilement of the body is there, though that did not stop you taking the first kiss and some pleasure of Erchamion, a thing that ever shall the whelp have to live with, that her family bears your mark, a symbol of your power on their souls, a mark that she cannot exorcise nor can any of them. To fear that defilement is there, and it is simple. But to remake and reshape the soul.....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Starlight whispered in her ears seductive and powerful:</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>I did not and do not need the pleasure of your flesh to remake you into my daughter and in my image and in my likeness. Ilmare Utumnotari have you been. Now you shall be Ilmare Vardariel, and in this unity of souls I shall forge you and in this, even if I do not have a Secret Fire Melkor would have wasted himself to the bone in futility to seek, I can defy my father and curse his works in a way he and all Arda shall rue even beyond any promised healing. I tore your soul apart, darling. It still bleeds. It weakened you, made you so weak you nearly bled to death and needed it to restore to where it was before this. In this, I am to blame for your humiliation at the hand of a hound. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Now you'll be strong, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Varda transformed and took a form like a great squatting Balrog lit with starlight, wings spreading from window to window and her presence  much more immense within the place. Like a brooding gas giant that yoked moons around it her presence overwhelmed her minions, that fell on their feet, and led to wails and screams of terror from her captive. The Balrog opened its mouth over-wide and light began to extend like the very puncture-organ of Ungoliant that had speared her side so long ago, and it struck straight into the scars from Huan. </p><p>Light glowed and thrummed across the expanse of Angband and a pillar of light shattered the cloud-cover across Beleriand. The clear night that followed saw mortals shrinking and hiding from the light of stars, save those who had come in secret to hear whispered words with the Star-Wolves that would promise them great rewards for treachery in the trial of strength to come. In Angband itself, it was called the Night of Screams and none save Varda and Ilmare would ever know the fullness of the truth or of the transfer of power and the union of souls, nor what Ilmare had lost and how no gain could ever remotely come close to that loss. Only Eonwe and Melian would suspect some of the truth.</p><p>That Ilmare did not become Vardariel immediately and in fullness was a testament to her very strength as the mightiest of all the Maia, for only she could have held out or even sought to hold to resistance. Yet it was no longer a conscious thing, merely a weariness and apathy that led her to eschew direct participation on the last battles, for Mother forbade it lest she be wounded again, and it was a thing of denial and refusal without memory of why she did it. The Valar knew nothing of her deed this night, though Illuvatar did and made His displeasure known in the coming of a dream to the Star-Queen of which she spoke little, having seen something of Him beyond a face He usually showed to His children.</p><p>Already the mightiest of the Maiar, she had risen to become as a lesser one of the Aratar, a worthy succeessor. Her soul reforged, as Varda stood over her slumbering daughter, steam still rising from a form that was in a deep slumber. It was no longer just hers. In that power and in that unity she had merged it the way the souls of mortals and Quendi and the Tinuviel reflected a union of souls. In slumber, where she could not cling to a face that had ceased to truly be hers any longer, she was taller, mightier, gleaming with a mirror of her mother's starlight, the Song echoing in her as it had in Varda of old.</p><p>A sinister smile crossed her lips and Varda, who even diminished had no equal in sheer destructive force, even with her brother Melkor in the field personally, strode from that room to another chamber where following mental orders Gothmog was strapped to a pillar.</p><p><em><strong>Gothmog....</strong></em>she said with a mocking kindness.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I have made myself a daughter. That is the reward for your insubordination and your delay. She was too wounded to survive otherwise. Your tardiness diminished me, Valarauko-King. It has diminished me and made me at last truly vulnerable to mortal weapons were they to be too close. Were I to allow them to do it I in truth would let them get in a strike, for it would remind me not to be arrogant and beyond my limits. But they will not do that. Even diminished I am starlight.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She raised her left hand, flame gathering around it.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>And whatever else it does to souls and hearts and minds, starlight burns. Even a spirit of fire knows greater power in the rays of my stars. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Light erupted outward and Gothmog did not scream, for he was in origin of the people of Aule, the greatest of Aule's Maia to defect to her ranks. Mighty were her people and though he was not as mighty as Mairon, whom he knew would have endured anything from any who would have sought to corrupt him and been stronger, never falling, only enduring, he was mighty enough that he did not reward the Elder Queen of the Stars with a scream.</p><p>THE PALACE OF ORODRETH, NARGOTHROND, CONCLAVE OF THE ELF-LORDS:</p><p>The throne of the Elves that would fall to Gil-Galad in the Second Age when he strove against the Hell-Queen Ilmare of Muspelheim, for the remainder of the First Age had in truth fallen to Turgon of Gondolin, who had come from his secret city with a mighty host. To his right there was an Elf of Noldo-elements but hair dark as night and with traces of the Avari. Perhaps the last of that now-extinct people, for he was akin to Eol, whose disappearance was remarked, laconically, by Turgon as being that of 'his own fires consumed him.' Beyond him there was the greatest assembly of the Free Peoples that would ever be made. There were those who would be spoken of in deep infamy, Basajaun and his host, the Easterlings of the Far East, and there were the vast throngs of the Haradrim, the first people by this label. Dark they were in hue, deep rich browns ranging from a light brown to a rich dark brown that was a hue that was a wonder to their brethren who in centuries in the north had seen lighter, more olive, brown replace the darker brown that had hewn its way through the south.</p><p>Men were not so numerous in these Ages as in others, the larger contingent of non-Quendi forces were that of the Lords of Belegost and Nogrod, and a vast contingent from Khazad-Dum, under command of Crown Prince Durin Eldardoom, this one as large as the remaining forces of the northern holds. In this fashion the Longbeards, later the most famous and iconic of all the Dwarf clans, came to the eyes of the Elves.</p><p>It was Turgon who agreed to plans, yet it was Maedhros, who had learned of the raid on Angband (as the story was told, and carefully censored, lest the Oath activate itself and mar all else, as Maedhros agreed to shelve the news of the Silmaril for a time, while quietly planning to march on Doriath in strength, girdle be damned, afterward). Maedhros who had learned and sent agents out, and in swiftness that showed an eagerness, now a half-century removed from the Burning, for one last throw of the blade into the face of the Star-Queen.</p><p>Only the hosts of the Sindar in the Age under the Stars could have rivaled it and then the Avari, whose greater warlike traits had brought them to ruin in a short timespan, had augnmented them twice-fold.</p><p>For two months amidst the glory of Nargothrond the High King agreed. Varda could not be overcome by sneakiness, for her stars were ever watchful and under the Ban there was no hope of aid from the West. Yet a captive released from Angband, filthy, disheveled, and prematurely aged to a point that he had stubble on his chin had mentioned that she had changed, diminished. That the loss of hope from the wounding of the Hell-Queen had wrecked her chances and her will to act. Varda was weak, as weak as she'd ever been, and with the weakness of the Star-Queen made more real by the heroism of Beren and Luthien, the latter known by virtue of stories to be of the Ainu-kin of Varda Elentari, as was Melian, yet in their heroism and defiance of the Star Queen before her very throne, they had inadvertently altered the view of contemporaries and of posterity.</p><p>No more was Melian the Fae Queen of Doriath, now she was the revered Star-Shield of the North. Forces of all the Elven-Kingdoms gathered, Turgon keeping to himself that Ulmo had personally risen from the sea to counsel against this and shaken his head when his council was dismissed.</p><p>Great were their legions, the greatest ever assembled, though a mere portion of the devastating power of the legion that had sustained the Siege with its firepower. From howitzers to ballista, from assault rifles to crude muzzle loaders and pikes.</p><p>The strategy would be simple. Move by day, sleep by night, and then when reaching the Anfauglith rendered a blasted heath by the soul-hungry star-flame of the Burning, at last move in a forced march of surpassing speed, using ample rest in the earlier march to ensure that the mortals, who would hold the rear as a concession to their relative need to replenish in ways beyond the Dwarves and the Elves, to stand at the gates, to draw the hordes of the Star-Queen, and with the Hell-Queen dead somewhere and slain by the heroism of Beren and Luthien, to shatter them beyond repair such that even the hundred Balrogs left with the Star-Queen's destruction and that of both the father of the Star-Wolves and their mightiest and most bloated force of wrath and ruin could not hope to repair things.</p><p>Weaker they might be, and even the greatest hopes of Maedhros knew that a hundred Balrogs would be a force that could not be defeated in truth, but this stroke would at one blow rebalance the war and make it equal. So would Mandos be defied (though this was a quiet murmur among the Feanorians and not mentioned beyond the most secret of family counsel). The decision was made on high noon of the middle of the year 472, the longest day of the year. Only the very wisest pondered an omen when the oath for the League of Maedhros was sworn in the twilight of a night where the cloud cover was porous and songs whispered from the skies that thirsted for blood and skulls.</p><p>THAT SAME EVENING, CHAMBER OF THE STAR-QUEEN:</p><p>Ilmare awoke, at last, with what had seemed to be a very long night's sleep to realize that she had slept for months. Her Fana did not smell as one would, for it had changed. It glowed, and she looked at herself in wonder and trembling. Then with more trembling she looked inward, toward the portion of the fire given her by the Allfather.</p><p>Her mouth was silent and her eyes closed and she started screaming without stop at the sight of what her soul became, and still moreso when the door opened and a warm smile with starlight that no longer seemed painful and like it clawed at her soul but one with her and her presence:</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>At last, darling, you are awake. No more battlefields for you. I did not go to the trouble to make a daughter to allow some mortal to thwart them and to take my Erinti away from me.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Her lips formed words and her screams intensified as the words echoed with a warmth she did not come close to feeling.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Thank you, mother. I love you.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Varda's smile was warm and welcoming to her transformed soul. A lesser Maia saw it unclad and moved away from their senses, feeling revulsion and horror, and a strange kind of pity for the Hell-Queen, who would be spending time of them most with their mistress. None who spent time thus ever came out whole or clean again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Nirnaeth Arnoediad:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>'Tears unnumbered ye shall shed' said the doom of the Doom-sayer. And now, that judgment comes to full flower.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Of the battles of the Wars of Beleriand, the controversy over the first means its details are there, in greater detail, and in questions over whose precise sword strokes or volleys of rifle fire meant more than whom. Of Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the details are simple. The Elentari, fresh from the disappearance of her handmaiden, who for a long time in the Noldor-centric narrative was assumed dead without a trace until her arising in terror and splendor as from the grave when the War of the Elves and the Muspellir began in the Second Age, was deemed weak, vulnerable, the loss of her great servant dealing her a blow that would leave her exposed to make a vital error. Total triumph was beyond them, the horrors of the War of Wrath a mystery. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In truth, what would unfold would become a catastrophe, one such that there was a wish that the Hell-Queen still lived, for then it might have been less triumphant. Ever had it seemed the Hell-Queen did not seek the total triumph of her Queen, but when she 'died' the Hosts of the Quendi found to their sorrow that the Elder Queen who had come from the stars had power in great nature, even at her weakest. The War of the Burning earned that name from her fire unleashed in the great fire-storm that surged around and had created the Rivers of Iron. The other name this battle would have would be Battle of the Star-Goddess, for in it, the Star-Queen displayed that her power, in its uses, even in its decay could be wielded in a manner more terrible than anything her foes imagined. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In her case, no dragon guarding its lair could be more menacing than the Elder Queen who had come from beyond the stars and realized that her triumph would become the first in a sequence of the sacking and falls of the Quendi kingdoms, and a long and slow road to her own final fate. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>As a giant of fire she strode before them, and in her ring of iron the hopes of the Eldar, Dwarves, and Men died. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Under the singing light of stars their armies and their hopes had risen. </em>
</p><p><em>In the singing light of stars and armor of gold, their armies died.</em>-<em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>BEFORE THE GATES OF ANGBAND:</p><p>Even before the catastrophe came there were signs. The armies of Eldar that usually warded the gates, those that would have been easier targets to whet armies on victory and re-hone instincts that had lain fallow in the first stirrings of what became the Great Defeat, were withdrawn. Before them, clad in armor of what was like woven starlight and otherwise a metal of brilliant golden and blue hues, her eyes glowing with a terrible light, though otherwise weaponless, stood the Star-Queen. In the sight of her clad in armor and not in her starlight there was encouragement. Both times she had been seen before she had never made such a concession or such a need.</p><p>New appreciation came for High King Fingolfin, and the sons of Feanor paused very carefully at the sight of the great Crown with only two Silmarilli. It confirmed them in what would begin to seal the fate of Doriath, a reason why their armies would be allowed to flee. Most of the most veteran Quendi, who had fought hard and well from the Wars under the Stars to the Burning were dead, bar the kings and their most elite retainers. These were new armies, even of the Quendi, the most elderly of the Dwarves no longer in condition to sustain offensive wars (though in defense of their holds they were nigh-unstoppable for they had little to lose and much to gain). All of them saw a giant, hill-sized, clad in armor that gleamed with a light that glimmered and echoed with a deadly droning-song.</p><p>The Elentari was diminished, a sight visible to the Feanorians, who were more deeply connected to the realm of the soul, and to a guest from the realm of Doriath, Artanis of the House of Finarfin, newly-wed to Celeborn of Doriath. This was her sole encounter with the wars, when she led the armies in a prayer to Eru, the echo before the giant and singular form of the colossus that simply chuckled, a light and genteel sound for a being that size, that echoed with a dissonant wind-like fashion around the armies. As the prayer ended the chuckles became a musical set of thunderclaps, laughter that warbled with a tone of madness.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Yes, vermin. Call upon my Father, him you slighted. Him you slighted when you spilled the blood of kin on His sacred soil. Call upon Him and the Lords of the West you defied and are under a ban of slow and lingering death and defeat. Call upon him in front of I, I who am His agent in this. You were told that you shall shed tears unnumbered, that here you shall know weariness and failure. Who sheds the blood of kin, by kin shall blood be shed.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>With that she raised her right hand, the gauntlet gleaming in the sunlight.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>I have always been beyond all of your kind, and at my weakest, all that is to you is that my power over my starlight to restrain its heat.....slips.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Light began to form along the fingers of that gauntlet, as she raised the other and star-flame kindled along it, too. In by inch the Star-Flame kindled along her armor, until every inch of the Elentari glowed and sang with her power and her glory. The effect was splendid, and beneath them the ground trembled. Tunnels had been delved since the burning, shored up in a vast ring, aiming to seek from the flanks and the rear the full weight of the foe, starting with the humans, the weakest and most fragile of the lot. Tunnels that ringed a vast area meant for what was hammering from beneath. The armies' focus divided, the bulk focusing on the Elentari, who strode forward leaving footsteps of molten ground beneath her, the song inducing madness that caused numbers of troops to break formation at first until her glowing hand moved with a dismissive flick of her wrist. A trail of fire flicked out and consumed the Quendi who had broken the ranks.</p><p>Numbers rose out of tunnels, swarms of great hordes of the Eldar. No sight seen of the Hell-Queen, and the rumors of her death seemed confirmed, and then the ground burst open when a single great golden head rose. It was akin somewhat to that of the dragons of Melkor, if smaller, and gleamed with a golden hue like that of some of the smaller and more voracious of the soul-devourers. Then a second head rose like the first, and then a third, and beyond them great bat-like wings, all sharing that hue. The creature shrieked with a voice like a bell, the music of the spheres echoing, and in the horror of that moment, the appearance of a thing akin to the greatest of the creatures in Arda, their only equals those of the Eagles of Manwe Sulimo, the armies realized at last not only was there doom before them, but when the armies of the Easterlings let fall the symbol of the League of Maedhros and raised of all sigils that of the Hell-Queen, the crown of fire and the sigil of the Muspellir that was within it, a name in calligraphy of Ilmare's own design, that the despair at last sank in.</p><p>None who endured the hell of being caught between the throngs of the Eldar, the fires of the Star-Queen who strode as a colossus lit in her own flames, between the Star-Dragon Hydra that sought to unleash streams of singing starlight from its throat that thrummed like ringing bells that clamoured with fire and fury and desolation, and the treachery of the Easterlings, did so with expectation to survive. Beyond all hope, the lords of the Kingdoms and a small portion, a remnant of that glory would endure. As the armies ringed them and they were caught between twin flames, there began the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Unnumbered Tears. As ranks they closed, the Star-Dragon's power burning its way through the armies of Men on the Right with an insulting ease, and it made its way straight for the lords of Nogrod, who closed ranks around one of the few Khazad whose name is known to the records of the Red Book.</p><p>Azhagal, whose helm was carved in one of the few Dwarven acknowledgements of Valar beyond he they called Mahal, the Dragon-Helm later known from the tale of Turin Turambar, and his men turned around and charged toward the dragon. Still did Nogrod retain heavier firepower, and the first of the Star-Dragons was a youth compared to what would come when bright Earendil would make his voyage beyond hope. Between this and the weapons marked with dwarven runes, their power besieged a colossus but a few few shorter in its youth than Varda at her height, and the impact led the creature to roar in the bell-like shrieks of pain that were its own.</p><p>In one of the greatest feats of the Naugrim, their king took a great spear of cold iron honed by the idea long present that eventually the Star-Queen would make her own twisted mockeries of Melkor's great and noble beasts, and with the aid of his thanes charged directly for the belly of the Hydra. With a massive shock effect their blade punctured clean through the golden scales. Singing starlight engulfed the king and turned his Dragon-Helm the brilliant golden hue it would attain in later years, but the dragon wailed and took flight, disappearing for a time into the depths of Arda, where it would lay a few eggs and lesser heirs that would return to plague mortals and dwarves in distant times in what became known as the Withering Heaths.</p><p>The dragon's disappearance simply meant the Eldar closed ranks, though there was visible fright in their troops, and in that thinness and overstretch of their lines, under the guardianship of the thanes of the Hadorians Huor and Hurin, identical twin brothers, the ranks of Elven kings and as many of their troops who could flee would. Too, the Dwarves of Nogrod marched out bearing their king, and that impact meant even the Star-Queen stared in shock, and made no effort to order a pursuit. From there, the battle became a question of killing and of time, the Easterlings that had sided with the Star-Queen slain to a man by the Haradrim, though the Haradrim took great losses in this process. By this, these Haradrim became accounted as the Edain of the far Western lands of Westernesse. Among them, too, many of the Faithful who would become the elite of the realms of the Successors.</p><p>The butchery was long and it was pitiless, the burning face and armor and star-flame that gleamed in the body of the Star-Queen meaning the armies were pinned and her smile a rapt one as she savored the triumph of her armies marred only by the flight of one of her great creations revealed over-soon and over-young. Hoplelessness granted them the desperate courage of those who had nothing to lose by death save a manner more dignified than the slavery of Angband. The gathered weight of the sons of Feanor and the remaining lords of the Houses of Fingolfin and Finarfin formed a massive wedge amplified by the cataphractii of the Haradrim, who though sorely depleted against the Easterlings and those traitors within their own ranks spent their strength in a massive assault.</p><p>With the burning giant in the deep background and her motions unleashing the fires that blasted armies to wreck and to ruin, and the thin ranks of the frightened Eldar before them, the assault slaughtered the cataphractii s to a man and cost several of the bravest and most foolish among the Quendi lords (for in this both were the same) but it punctured the line of the butchery. With the  last of the ranks of Men joining them as a bulwark, the Men fought to shield the retreats of Elven armies, even as the other Dwarves and Elves, including the then-Crown Prince of Khazad-Dum who could become Durin the Hero in the memory of his descendants, and Durin the Throneless likewise.</p><p>Hopeless beyond measure, it was obstinacy strengthened by the knowledge that to live and to fall into the ranks of the Star-Queen's monsters would be worse than any death by sword or soul-obliterating annihilation. In that desperation there were tales unsung, for the butchery lasted a night and a day, and had not the matter of the Nauglamir come between them and the fall of the last of the armies of Nogrod in the folly therein, the friendship of Elves and Dwarves would have become that of of the famed Elf-Friend of the last days of the Third Age. Such did not prove to be the case.</p><p>To those who fought in the ranks of the Slain it mattered not, though one by one they were slain, and then there two. It took seventy Jotnar, the colossal things bloated with starlight-blood to overcome Huor, who fought with valor uncounted by the side of his brother. Their blood had melted his axe to a haft and yet in feats of unparalleled strength, perhaps boosted by the intervention of the Allfather, he had been buried and smothered beneath the weight of their corpses.</p><p>Last on the field was Hurin, his eyes seeming to glow with the weight of whatever power had granted him such great vigor and splendor on that field, standing atop a mountain of Eldar and Jotnar corpses, shouting "Day shall come again" with each blow of an axe of Dwarvish make. Huor died shielding his brother from one of the Jotnar, and it was beneath a weight of broken bodies that Hurin was taken by a figure that came upon him as a mirage among the slain. She strode in armor matching that of the era of the War of the Powers, though he did not know this. She had been summoned by her Queen, who had dimmed the glow, savoring the unleashing of what she truly was at heart a bit much, using it to ignite the bonfires of severed corpses, four each in four separate directions, as each of these Hills of the Dead became spots where nothing would ever grow again.</p><p>Her mother's light gleamed in her eyes and it was a lesser mirror of Varda's dread grin that greeted him when heat burned corpses around him to ashes and he looked into brilliant burning eyes. Her right gauntlet gleamed with starlight and hummed in appreciation. She had grown in height at least thrice where she had been, and as a Maia she was already tall. She looked as one of the Valar, wrought in terror and fire and elemental starlight.</p><p>
  <em> <strong>You....you're trouble. You denied Mother her great victory that would have seen her enemies dead and the Quendi destroyed at a stroke, and your little race of grubbers with them. </strong> </em>
</p><p>That smile was cold and while he knew, improbably who this had to be, how-</p><p>
  <em><strong>You'll find out that leaving Mother denied her fullness of triumph on her terms is a worse fate than death. Much worse.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her light dimmed seemingly and a fist slammed into his helm with what was a light touch in truth for one of Ainu-make but in that single impact darkness rose to swallow him. Hurin Thalion and his family would come to wish, cruelty though it was, that he had died as Huor, for then the fate of the Children of Hurin, another of the wicked deeds of the Star Queen, would never have come to pass.</p><p>With his unconscious body shouldered on the pauldron of the revived Hell-Queen died the last hopes of the Free People of Beleriand. Ilmare looked as her mother wished on the vast pyres of the battlefield and its blood and entrail stained detritus and smiled, her eyes rapt for a moment. This was her mother's vision come true. The wars were over. Now.....now the killing and sacking began, and all she had to do was pick up one middling little human. For a fate that would be cold and terrible indeed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Of the Children of Hurin, the Dragonslayer and the Hammer:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hurin Thalion has gained the personal animosity of Varda Elentari from proving the greatest soldier of the War of Unnumbered tears. In malice she curses him to remain fixed on a throne in her throneroom gazing through the eyes of the stars as his children become the  targets of her revenge and her malice.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>The tale of the children of Hurin is one of the few, together with that of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin that marks a human-centric tale in the Red Book. Prior to this, even the tale of Beren and Luthien is as much that of Luthien as of Beren. The Children of Hurin, Turin Turambar, Lalaith, and Nienor Niniel, were cursed by no deed of their own to earn such a thing, but by the malice of the Star-Queen. It is one of the bleakest of all the Tales of the First Age. The tale of the Fall of Gondolin has its sufferings and its sorrows, the demise of the Kingdom of Doriath is a narrative of sordid intrigues and the return of the Oath to active malice against the Quendi. Yet in the tale of the Fall there is an element of hope, the Fall of Gondolin sees the greatest of all Mariners, the Magellan of Arda, reach Valinor itself, and with his wife Ulwing, bring mercy and the grim and terrible elements of the War of Wrath and the end of Beleriand itself. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In all of these there is hope, and ultimately the return of the Valar and the downfall of Elentari. In the case of the Children of Hurin there is sorrow upon sorrow, culminating in the suicide of all three, leavened by Turin becoming that rarest of figures, a title shared by but four others known. A Dragonslayer. In this, there is the most stark emphasis on the hopelessness of war when the force of all incarnate evil is that power that burns in the Heavens given a will and a form and a voice. It is for this reason that the Tale of Hurin endures most in those cultures that have found wellsprings akin to it. The Ragnarok of the Norse where a figure recognizably descended from the Hell-Queen overcomes the armies of warring Gods and their foes under Loki Laufeyson and his sons and burns the world in fire. The World-cycles of Mesoamerica and the Andes and the Dineh. And in medieval times, alone among the Tales of the Red Book it was reshaped and rewoven into the Tale of Turan and Antonina, the prtoganists given distinctly Catholic mindsets and Varda Elentari's name alone enduring of those days, and her identified most directly with the medieval Satan. </em>
</p><p><em>In truth, to see the Star-Queen as the Satan in all her malice and evil of medieval legends does not appear to be that innately wrong</em>.-<em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE KINGDOM OF DOR-LOMIN:</p><p>The tale of the Children of Hurin is most identified with that of Turin Turambar and Lalaith, the two children who feature most directly in the tales, and with the sorrowful fate of Nienor, who would be interwoven in dark designs. Yet in truth it is the tale of their father, Hurin Thalion, and of the price of his valor and of his heroism. Their father was the King of Dor-Lomin, which had in the wake of the Burning passed from the children of Haleth, long fled to the forests, to the taller and more stoic house of Hador,  men dark of skin with blonde hair and blue eyes. Of them, it was Galdor, to whom the kingdom had passed, who sealed an element of the wound by marrying one of the leaders of the chieftains of the Halethians, Hareth. Their children, Huor and Hurin, and their grandchildren, Turin and Tuor, would become among the greatest warriors and figures of all Arda and of all humanity.</p><p>They were giants in the Earth in those days, who waged war not merely against powerful and ancient sorcerers in the sense of Thoth-Amon and in the days of Westernesse the Star-Blooded creature known in later years as Thulsa Doom and in that age as the Skull King, but in the very first Age of the Red Book against monsters and the literal incarnate embodiments of evil that were the Star-Queen and the Hell-Queen of Muspelheim. Hurin and Huor, princes of the new Kingdom of Dor-Lomin, a militarized state that had one of the few professional armies of the first human era, would leave in the time of the Union of Maedhros to the butchery of the Unnumbered Tears. Hurin would leave behind him a newborn daughter, Lalaith, a very young son, Turin, and marched with the armies of Men, Elves, and Dwarves to the battlefield. In anticipation waited those at home when the Free Peoples marched to war.</p><p>Of the disaster news only came when the fleeing Elven leaders and their aristocracies in their train returned. In the Unnumbered Tears perished to a man the armies of the Kingdoms of Dor-Lomin and the other shadowy Hadorian Kingdom in the east. It was the arrival of Elu Thingol on a white horse with that news that led to panic in the streets of Dor-Lomin. It was known that Hurin Thalion himself and Huor his brother were the last left on the field, though this was known to later leaders who were among the last to have fled. The memory of Hurin and of his valor led Thingol to offer to Morwen Ethelwen and to her children a realm in his kingdom, Doriath.</p><p>Thingol still lived, though the thirty three years of the life of Turambar and Lalaith and the thirty of Nienor would prove to be thirty-three of the last forty before Thingol passed to Mandos and to Valinor, slain on the sword of no less than Celegorm himself. At this time, too, Beren and Luthien lived and with them their son, Dior, he who alone passed between the verdant Island of the Ever-Young at the northernmost expanse of the Girdle where none save he ventured to and forth, and who gleamed as Melian herself with a power that made him unique among the ranks of Arda save in his storied family.</p><p>Morwen was proud and though pregnant, and visibly so, she chose to go with the company, in a grim irony as events would portend, of soldiers of Nargothrond to the forests of Brethil, and would live there with her new daughter for twenty years. Of the fate of Hurin Thalion, a strange source, perhaps the scrying eyes of Melian perceiving in the depths of time, or as others have said a set of servants then taken against their will and thereafter among the company of the Repentant Ones. What in the later years of the Second Age came to add truth to these accounts, and to append them to the beginning of the Tale until it has been forgotten that initially there was no clear truth, only distant rumors, was the presence of no less than Ilmare Vardariel, the Queen of the Realm of the World-Destroyers of the Second and Third Ages, then believed to be dead among the Quendi.</p><p>Not until the Burning of Mithlond by the sword Nightfall and the open proclamation by the Hell-Queen of her return, the start of the great War of the Elves and Muspelheim of the Second Age would it be taken as truth that Ilmare lived by the Elves.</p><p>THRONE OF WOE, ELDABAND:</p><p>Taken captive and knocked unconscious by a seeming ghost whose gauntlet proved quite tangible indeed, Hurin Thalion awoke to find himself  facing the Hell-Queen at the Hill of Severed Skulls.</p><p>Ilmare had changed, and though the Second and Third Age would come to know the new and empowered force of destruction well, it was this very change and the ghoulish scene of decaying severed heads, the blood running from them as a pool on the ground that left Hurin Thalion uncertain that what he had seen was real. The tale, told by one of the few Balrogs to have repented and regained its original shape and hue as one of the Fire-Maiar of Nessa, once her favorite and taken and ruined and laid waste by the Star-Queen as an act of spite to she who had bound her, noted that Hurin was forced to sit upon the decaying heads, the gleaming form of the Hell-Queen looking at him with a cocked head.</p><p>Her shape and hue had changed, too. From her brilliant gleaming white to the kind of whispy darkness on the outer edges, illuminated by light that sang and reached out to brush like invisible tendrils against the soul. </p><p>
  <em><strong>Everyone else in this hill of the severed heads died. Your brother among them. None else lived, Thalion. You remain, alone, caught in the eyes of that which is beyond you.</strong> </em>
</p><p>A giant strode toward them, moving with the fires that had illuminated her body and laid waste to the bodies that were decayed stilled. Her armor gleamed as if it had been polished.</p><p><em><strong>Mother's coming,</strong> </em>Ilmare said in a sing-song lilt.</p><p>"You are of the Ainur, Hell-Queen."</p><p>
  <em><strong>Such a great grasp of the obvious, Hurin Thalion of the House of Hador. Perhaps there is no great miracle in your survival, merely a simple mind suited to wield a sword and lacking any further comprehension of things.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"It was my understanding from what Elves mentioned to our ancestors that your kind did not have life in the manner of the Children of the Allfather."</p><p>She laughed then, a mad warble that seemed to interweave sobs and screams. Her right eye had a kind of spastic twitch that registered as pulse of light. A tear streaked down her cheek, one of fire that contrasted with the starlight-defined shape of her body, and her fists clenched and unclenched in a spastic set of maneuvers that made Hurin curious, but only to a point.</p><p>
  <em><strong>They told you the truth, after a fashion.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The giant that strode to them now knelt in front of the mound and Hurin stared in mute horror at the similarities.</p><p><em><strong>Hurin Thalion</strong></em>. The voice was sickly-sweet and her light far more intense in degree but not different in kind to that of the being to her left.</p><p>"Varda the Demon-Queen of the Stars."</p><p>
  <em><strong>Demon-Queen, that's what your kind call me?</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Among other things. You and your monster seek to intimidate me by placing me on a throne of skulls?"</p><p>Varda's smile was wide and it was sinister, as she laughed, a sweet and sickly set of thunderclaps.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Not intimidation, Thalion. A reminder of what valor earned all the rest of those who died. Yet you, little vermin, you lived. You lived and your family shall suffer. Never shall my light part from them, and all that they seek to do shall turn against them.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Coward. You cannot kill me, so you target the innocent."</p><p>
  <em><strong>They are your children, Thalion. Heirs of a people not allergic to women with swords. Were they given armor and swords and shields, what would they do with them? Dance?</strong> </em>
</p><p>Hurin's glare intensified.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>In your past, Ulmo spoke to you. I can smell his saltwater upon you still. He most have showed you something, for that Vala is most like me in that he is active, he defies the simple rules placed on our kind. To help you vermin, not to master you, but still....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>The light in her eyes burned brightly, but Hurin glared at her intensely.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Tell me what it is that he showed you, Thalion.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Teeth gritted he snarled: "No."</p><p>Ilmare's horrid grin akin to that of the Vala's intensified.</p><p>
  <em><strong>You are a mere vermin, I am mistress of the stars. Tell me the name of the realm, and its location.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"No."</p><p>The light burned more brightly and Hurin's face bore the horrid burn on the left cheek that would endure, the cheek burned away.</p><p>Still Hurin defied her, and Varda shook her head.</p><p><em><strong>Useless,</strong></em> she muttered. <em><strong>Very well, you had your chance to save your family.</strong> </em></p><p>In her hand Hurin went, moved with the Ainur to the Throne of Woe, a place where the Star-Queen placed those she sought to dominate and to cow personally to her will. But one other name is known to have endured its torment. Maeglin of Gondolin, he who would be captured and brought to bring about the fall of the last of the Elven Kingdoms.</p><p>Upon the Throne he sat and it was Varda, now clad in a simple dress of brilliant white weave, her hair flowing with starlight down to her waist, who stood before him.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I know that Turgon of the House of Fingolfin has a kingdom. His armies were among them that burned. The beggar-king and his nobles fled, as did the others. Where is Turgon's kingdom, Thalion?</strong> </em>
</p><p>"I will tell you nothing."</p><p>From Varda's gleaming eyes and those of the starlight he saw Hithlum as the birds and the dragons would see it, then Dor-Lomin, then his family speaking to Thingol of Doriath.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Ponder your words carefully, Thalion. They are at my mercy, all of them.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Mercy? That demented thing that calls you mother shows what your mercy is worth."</p><p>
  <em><strong>So be it. By my stars, they shall be accursed and the gaze of my light and its hunger shall be upon them. Everything that they do shall turn to evil, and your inheritance and that of your family shall not be that of the soldier that stood and saved the faithless vermin, but that of my servants and the ruin of your families.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"You lie. You cannot govern the world. Only one there is who does, and he is Melkor, Great King of all Arda. You cannot do as you say and retain this horrid shape of light that burns and destroys."</p><p>
  <em><strong>You are vermin, one of the Second-Born. Short of lives, thoughts, perspectives. Skill with a sword brought you here, for such is the reward of the Second-Born. Born in violence, to die of violence. You cannot grasp the thoughts of Melkor the so-called Great King, Arien the Daystar, or Sulimo, Lord of the Winds. He who is my husband though he is seated among the Aratar. Ever is he the faithful agent of my will, and in time to come, the Aratar shall fall. Nessa shall be taken to my pleasure, and before them my consort and I shall know that which my Fater has forbidden.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Again, you lie. Were the thought of Melkor and Arien to shield me, to them might it be given. You, Queen of Hell, have no such power. The Great King shall never be dethroned while all Arda endures."</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>You speak of a Great King, Thalion? For a moment Hurin caught a mere glimpse of the sheer infinity of the stars and the sheer weight of their chorus caused blood to run from his nose and eyes and mouth. Not much, but still blood. That is greatness. That is a great kingdom. I rule almost all that is, I rule the heavens that this world is but a mere speck of dust beneath. The light of those stars, of an infinity that squeezes blood from a stone, weighs upon them. The Lords of the West have placed your allies under the Ban. What were the words of the Doomsayer? "No aid shall the Valar lend thee in thy quest?" The Elves burn, Thalion. Their kingdoms fall and mine rises and rises and rises. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>The cover at night that blocks my stars weakens, and even where it endures, I see all that is on the Earth and in Ulmo's waters. The clouds are fading away at night, little Thalion. My husband hears my call and he acts accordingly. The Elves are burning, and soon, Thalion.....your family will burn too, and in the hour of their deaths, the last words on their lips will be your name, for it will be my fires cursing them for your folly.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"Empty boasts. They might have convinced my ancestors who saw you ascendant and glowing with your starlight in the first realm of our kind, but we know the truth. You rule the heavens but you are a jail-crow fled, and a chain awaits you. Your husband was taken to you by force, a deed wicked in the sight of Allfather and Ainur, you wielded him as bait to forestall the first fall of your kingdom, and you displayed his shame before the armies. Behavior not fitting to a husband or a wife. You will fall, Varda Elentari, and your kingdom will fall with you. No fate awaits you but a chain and the judgment of the Great King."</p><p>At that first sentence Varda raised a sword, one of the discarded weapons of earlier projects, and her heat gleamed through it as the blade began to burn with a brilliant and terrible heat, and with a savage roar when Thalion had spoken "Behavior not fitting to a husband or a wife" she slammed the molten blade near the Throne of Woe, and a shard cut his right cheek.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Lies! Lies taught to you by rote, by Elves unthinking.</strong> </em>
</p><p>"This I tell you from no inspiration of Allfather or Melkor, but from mine on heart. Even if the Elves burn, even if Man and Dwarves burn, you shall never be mistress of our souls. We are are beyond you, and all your grasp."</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>What is beyond my stars is the Void and the Doors of Night. There, there is nothing. Within the boundaries of this world your short-lived race of vermin shall endure lives of misery beneath my starlight and herald its song with welcome each night, until there be no sweeter sound to them. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>You are on the Throne of Woe, Thalion, where I have broken others to thralls. You shall see what it is that I can do, to your short-lived and wasted race with wasted lives. Know, then, Thalion, that with my eyes shall you see, with my ears shall you hear, never shall you move from this throne until all is fulfilled unto the bitter end. You mocked me to my face, I who have made the infinite stars that ring Arda in all its manifold directions, and who can command the starlight to move even beneath the veil of Arien. They shall die in fire, Thalion, and they shall die cursing the fate of a father who chose to damn his family to hellfire rather than yield a kingdom of another kind of vermin. For Turgon of a hidden kingdom of cowards that evade the fate of other Elven realms, your family......</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>She leaned closer to him, the heat of her starlight burning portions of his flesh, and in the void of her presence there was a strange and undeniable cold interwoven with a brilliant and terrible heat, and her voice whispered into the very marrow of his soul a word not in the tongues of Elves or Men, but Valarin: </p><p>
  <em><strong>burns.</strong> </em>
</p><p>For thirty years Hurin Thalion sat frozen on a throne and gazed through the eyes of Varda Elentari and her starlight, but never once in all that time did he break nor ask for mercy for his kin, nor for himself. </p><p>DORIATH, THE BEGINNING:</p><p>The first of the sorrows of Turin and Lalaith came when they were sundered from their mother and Nienor Niniel, taken by Elu Thingol. Behind them, to the north and the west, Dor-Lomin burned, Gothmog, Lord of Balrogs, himself come to lead the burning. Doriath in these days was still in the age of Thingol, and Beren and Luthien remained ageless in the Isle of the Ever-Young to the north, where none ventured save Dior, son of Beren and Luthien, who inherited in full the strange gleam of Melian and Luthien and all that power that went with it. Never did Turin or Lalaith meet Beren or Luthien themselves, but the starlight-gleam of Dior was one familiar to them, for in childhood they were inseparable companions.</p><p>Misfortune would dog their steps, strange and inexplicable until whispers in the starlight told of the great Doom that laid upon the Children of Hurin. No creation of Turin's endured unmarred, sculptures could not be made to perfection. Ever would words spoken in softness become heard with harshness. The lives of Beren and Luthien had altered some of the innate fear and hostility in Doriath, but not all. Where Luthien had won divine blessing for herself and for her family, to have arrived by night under starlight was an omen of great fear, and never would Turin or Lalaith escape it. Words too, words of anger and of hostility, were spoken against them by Saeros, who had survived the Burning, and was wounded too much to serve in the Unnumbered Tears.</p><p>Saeros viewed the 'star-touched' as agents of woe and would speak in silence and occasionally in public, sowing hatred against the two children of Men. Yet Turin, in the friendship of Nellas gained much. For Lalaith, who shared with Turin a temper of hot blood, a size and strength unusual among the inhabitants of Doriath, and was keener to nurse slights and grudges (indeed, some saw in the work of star-madness that one named laughter laughed seldom), there was greater hostility. Even Saeros viewed of the two Turin as more friendly to Elves and to Elf-kind, for indeed he was, and came to see that Turin could, in the right hands even with the Doom become a great weapon for Doriath. No word came of Brethil, for as Dor-Lomin burned and vanished into ashes, and the northern edges of the Kingdoms of Doriath and Nargothrond burned, no news came of Brethil.</p><p>Rumor came, that the Hell-Queen lived, changed and swollen and become monstrous, called Half-Valie. Words of truth, though unheeded, for too much hope was there for Men and Elves and Dwarves in the idea that Beren and Luthien had slain the unkillable. These rumors brought the news of the Doom, and with that Doom was interspersed a total silence from Brethil, where no news would come of Nienor or Morwen until the fateful encounter in the wake of the fall of Nargothrond. With such news of the Doom, Turin and Lalaith came to dismiss it, for news that relied on the voices of the re-embodied evil dead was as no news at all.</p><p>Turin became thoughtful and learned much of Elves and of Elf-craft, inseparable from Beleg Cuthalion and Nellas. Lalaith, the hard and belligerent, became a warrior in the spirit of Haleth, learning from Turin in secret. Against the will of the Quendi, who did not deem it right for women, even of the Second-Born, to live and fight as men did, and with a positive delight in flouting their will, she joined Beleg and Turin in becoming a harrier of the Eldar of the Elentari who roved and expanded their power steadily through the north. It is in this time with the eclipse of the Hell-Queen for a time that the first of the great Eldar Lords of later years, such as those who would conquer and destroy Dwarf-Kingdoms and even Kingdoms of Men, building Eldamar in the north out of the ruins of the northern successor kingdom to the fallen Westernesse.</p><p>Yet in the remnants of the shrinking woods north of Doriath, woods that became more laden with menace and terror as the Tree-Folk, both Ent and Entwife and Huorn, of the north gathered there (as in Brethil, where it was their presence in the fullness that strengthened its presence, and its power to endure, and would swell the ranks of the Tree-Folk to the south as far as the infant Valusian tribal years in the Second Age, their peak) the strength of Strongbow, of the Elf-Man, and Haleth Reborn harried the Eldar tribes to their north. Such a scourge did they become that for a time the power of the Elentari encountered its delay.</p><p>Were Lalaith able to have made peace with becoming respected as a warrior in her own right, some even believed that enduring within Melian's Girdle might have forestalled the Doom. Even Saeros softened when Lalaith had made a personal duel with one of the great Eldar warriors a goal, achieved it, and taken his head. It was in the wake of one such return, in a pair of incidents witnessed by Nellas, that Lalaith and Turin and Strongbow had returned, laughing, when Saeros greeted them. He made a coarse and crude comment that Lalaith showed more to the women of Dor-Lomin than the instincts of beasts rutting in the field and in a sudden rage Lalaith picked up a rock and hurled it straight at Saeros's face, marring his skull. With a look of sourness and rage, Saeros departed.</p><p>The next morning, Lalaith was speaking to her brother and to Nellas when Saeros sought to ambush her and stab her in the back and Lalaith turned around, wrestling him and managing to take the blade from his hand and as he sought to strangle her, hurled it through his jaw. In fear Turin and Lalaith would flee. Nellas spoke on their behalf in a trial held by King Thingol and Queen Melian, and in her words, the two were pardoned. Yet in that morning, with the blood of Saeros spattering her, Turin had fled with his sister, knowing her hostility to Elves would not win her any kindness.</p><p>Beleg promised King Thingol that he would find Turin and Lalaith and return the Elf-Man and Haleth Reborn.</p><p>THE WOODS OF THE GAURWRAITH:</p><p>In their flight to the south, Turin and Lalaith would come near to Brethil, both motivated by hopes of sight or news of their sister. In their desperation they neglected simple elements of wood-craft and found themselves ringed by a group of men in mixes of Elven and Adunaic armor, Men hard of face and cold of eyes. These, the Gaur-Wraith, were Hadorian, scions of fallen Dor-Lomin. In the time since Gothmog and his legions of Eldar had fallen upon Dor-Lomin knowledge had been lost, and with the death of Galdor and Huor and the presumed deaths of Hurin and Morwen and their children they no longer knew lords, living only on what their swords had to offer them.</p><p>One of them came to Lalaith, and when he sought to lay hands on her person, skills honed against Eldar and at the side of Elves led her to strike him in an area where men of refinement did not scratch and as he fell, clutching himself, the other men laughed. That one arose and then Turin likewise fought him, and with that display of skill became Neithan of the Gaurwraith, as Lalaith became Dringiel, the Hammer. With the Hammer and the Wronged in their number the Gaurwraith began to become a mighty power indeed, lords of a new realm, one of many such flotsam detritus of fallen kingdoms, where the power of the Queen of the Stars was spreading ever further south. What had been trickles of Eldar became streams, and streams began to provide greater armies.</p><p>Not only against the growing forces of an Eldar-tribe under a being that called himself Elrond, the Star-Dome, father of the fathers of the Eldar-realms of Gundabad and the hordes that would swarm Khazad-Dum, would they war, but they were not averse to raiding others of Men. In the wake of one such raid, Turin came upon a woman fleeing, her clothes torn. In anger he slew her pursuer, uncautious, for in the shadows of what were known to later generations as Huorn and the kind of creatures like the monstrous Old Man Willow beyond the shire, malice among other entities would become stronger and sharper. With his blade bloodied, he saw the torn throat of her pursuer. Forweg, chieftain of the Gaurwraith. As events proved, Androg, another of the Gaurwraith sought to challenge Turin then, but Turin decline, seeking immediately a gathering of the Gaurwraith.</p><p>Before them and the approving eyes of his sister Dringiel, Neithan would lay low all challengers, and thus Turin, exile of Doriath, moved overnight to a lord, even on a small scale, of a band who ruled a territory between Doriath and Nargothrond. Against them were arrayed the growing power of Elrond, Lord of the Eldar, one of the mightiest of the petty-lords of the rising tide of Varda. Of a great size was Elrond, his family one of Avari stock and producing beings twice as tall and twice as broad as their ancestors. Of his kin, Elrond would be mightiest and greatest, though his grandson Eldabolg, of the time of the War of the Five Armies in the ruins of the Dragon's Lair, came close to his size.</p><p>To him the Gaurwraith and their tall and dark-haired chieftain were an annoyance that had begun to become too close to becoming a genuine threat, and he would dispatch Eldar forces to seek to hunt them down. From this time, until the demise of the band and the treachery of Mim, war flamed without end, though the success of Turin and Lalaith as leaders meant that the band would grow, from its original sixty, to a force of some three hundred. To them were drawn survivors of other petty kingdoms that Elrond destroyed. These were grim and inglorious years, and it was in this context of endless fighting and strife and fear that Beleg Cuthalion, who had tracked Turin and Lalaith through the realm of Elrond, appeared in the wake of a vicious fight with Eldar illuminated by fire before a cave. In fear did some of the Gaurwraith move, and they took him captive and bound him.</p><p>As events would prove, Turin would be away orchestrating the repulse and ambush of a probe by Elrond's scouts, and returned to find Beleg, releasing him and heralding his friend. Lalaith would arrive that evening and her sour look led to whispered mutters and hostility, yet Beleg bore words of pardon, and more, promised that the Gaurwraith would be welcome as paid soldiers of the realm of Doriath, new soldiers that could grant it great strength indeed. At this there were murmurs, and Turin was sorely tempted to take the offer. Yet his sister spoke to him in private with words of great strength and Turin shook his head regretfully, declining, stating that the Gaurwraith were adept soldiers, none better, in their realm. In the unfamiliar woods around Doriath, they would have to learn anew, and with this tactful response he answered Beleg and soothed the pride of his men, and declined to pass on the more choice phrases Lalaith had, for seldom did she forgive or forget the slights the Elves sent to her.</p><p>Indeed, her distaste at Beleg's presence, which became a common thing from thereafter every few months, even against the weight of Elrond of the Eldar, led her for a time to fight away from Turin. Then that autumn Elrond at last unleashed the full weight of his strength, and the three hundred of the Gaurwraith found themselves drawn together to the south, near the Pass of Teiglin, in pursuit of shelter. To their surprise, in the Amon Rudh, they encountered three creatures, debased descendants of the very first Dwarven colonists, as they preferred to see themselves.</p><p>Mim, Ibun, and Kim, the last of the Petty-Dwarves, were also the last scions of the original inhabitants of the land that had become Nargothrond. In Lalaith they found a willing and a helpful ear, for with them she shared hatred and malice toward Elves, things that grew with time and her habit of not choosing places to sleep carefully and enduring the droning music  of the Star-Kindler's chorus. To them was given a vast stronghold, where their tribe, the Last Thousand of the Petty-Dwarves, dwindled to one very elderly Dwarf and two that were middle-aged by their standards. Only a half-millennium did they live by comparison to their greater kin of Nogrod and Belegost, but the 'sons' were in age two centuries. So came the Gaurwraith to the Petty-Dwarf fortress, where their power knew a renaissance.</p><p>It was here at mid-winter that Beleg came and bore to Turin the Helm of Dor-Lomin, recovered by deeds of which he spoke little, and Turin took the helm. In an incautious burst of arrows fired at fleeing Eldar, that next day, Androg slew one of the sons of Mim, an act for which he was made to repent, and that ungraciously. The vast Petty-Dwarven fortress was grand, too grand for the Eldar-skirmishers that came to take it by force, even if they came at twice or thrice the total number of all the Men in the fortress. This much occurred to Elrond, and so he sought to bait the Men of the Gaurwraith into fighting in the open that next year.</p><p>When the ice thawed, the Eldar, who cared little for the hindrance of mud in those days with the stars singing in their veins in lieu of blood, began to move in force, and Elrond himself came with them, moving the full weight of his armies past the Pass of Teiglin, beneath the Hill.</p><p>The chant:</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>echoed from the armies, a chant meant to instill fear and trembling and to praise and honor the grim Goddess of the North, whose Palace of the North echoed in the serene and bloody Music of the Spheres. By this time, Mim had grown weary of his guests. They had raised against him now not simply the terrible riders of Nargothrond but the much worse hordes of the Star-Queen's monsters, and in this anger he had gone to a stream, muttering to himself in guttural Khuzdul when no less than Elrond himself appeared out of the woods and captured the Dwarf.</p><p>For that Mim had cursed and enspelled Androg for the slaying of his son, Mim understood well that the malice of the Elentari was worse than anything that Men or Elves would do to him, but against the sport of Eldar, who mutiilated their bodies and their captives for fun when there was no other targets to be had, his willpower, always lesser in the Petty-Dwarves than in their greater cousins, lessened, and was lessened still more fully when the severed head of his other son was presented him with a warning about 'little vermin seeking to rescue greater vermin.' Under heated blades and beatings, Mim confessed the weaknesses of his fortress. In the time of his absence, Androg had found a means to escape and showed it to the others, for a premonition had come of its necessity.</p><p>In this time, when Beleg returned and took up the sword by the side of his friend, Lalaith took that passage and rode to the south, refusing to serve at the side of Beleg Strongbow in anything. To her great surprise and chagrin, she was captured and taken to Nargothrond, where Orodreth, King of that city, found himself the unwilling host of a daughter of Hurin Thalion who seemed innately hostile to Elves, if pragmatic enough to realize that she had newer and greater chances there. With the Helm of Hador on his head (the later Dragon-Helm burned by the star-flame of the Star-Dragon and taken with it to its horde built in the ruins of Nargothrond and an heirloom of Doriath and Gondolin, would not be uncovered until the time of the release of the aged and wounded Hurin Thalion). </p><p>Unknown to them, orders had passed to Elrond of the Eldar from the Elentari herself, that if the wielder of the Helm of Hador be taken, he was to be taken alive, and then brought to the realm that the Eldar were beginning to call the Palace of Eternal Night, the name by which it would be known to them, and to their enemies, in later years. With the knowledge of the tortured and wounded Dwarf, the hordes of Elrond surged forth and in the weaknesses of the fortress stormed it, and one by one those of the Gaurwraith within it were slain, save a group of seven, who in emulation of the deeds of Hurin Thalion guarded the retreat. Of this seven, but two would remain unharmed, Beleg Strongbow, hurled against a wall by an oversized Elda that was in between Elda and Jotunn in shape and strength, though merely a grotesquely deformed Elda in truth, and Turin himself.</p><p>Androg was wounded by a blade covered in venom taken from one of the spawns of Ungoliant, and when he saw Mim, who had hated him, crawling toward the unconscious Beleg to torment him with a wicked blade of Petty-Dwarf make, he took a fallen Eldar knife and hurled it through the Dwarf's skull, knocking him unconscious. Beleg would awaken with a throbbing head and blood splattered along his face in a house of corpses, Eldar, Petty-Dwarf, and Men. He searched the fallen but nowhere among them was Turin. With a look of fear and worry on his face, Beleg would follow the tracks of the Eldar, tracing back to the west from the Petty-Dwarf fortress.</p><p>It was when he'd moved to near the edge of the former realm of the Gaurwraith that a spectral figure greeted him. Gwindor, a captive taken in the time of the Burning. The hellish light of the Star-Queen had done its work, parts of his body seemed quite literally melted, an eyesocket coated in flesh, and his right teeth were exposed to the edge of the jawline, parts of his right hand, the pinky and ring fingers, melted together*. Yet even withered and weakened by exposure to the grim power of the Star-Queen, Gwindor was more than most motivated for revenge against his captors. The hand that had melted together was not that of his sword arm and with sword and shield he and the Strongbow followed the Eldar to their camp.</p><p>It was guarded by the ancestors of the Wargs of the Second and Third Age, not entirely kindred to the Werewolves, the great Star-Wolves of the Palace of Eternal Night and the elite of the ranks of the Elentari, but creatures that were claimed in a monstrous evil to have been sired upon regular wolves. In grim and bloody work did Beleg and Gwindor slay them, and so too did they slay the Eldar, slitting throats and stabbing them in a strike of righteousness. They found Turin in the wake of this massacre, held chained with his hands above his head, back bloodied with a whip. The whip was vaguely akin to that of the Russian knout of later years+ and could well have killed Turin had it not been for Beleg's healing.</p><p>With that done, they untied Turin and sought to rouse him. Beleg's weapon, which would be wielded by Turin in his last deeds, was of Avari make. Some said from Eol himself, others from a forgotten lord of their people. It was called Aglachel, and was said to be a weapon of malice in its own right and capable at times of the power of speech. it was either the misfortune and the curse of the Elentari or the malice within the blade that led it to slip and strike into the armored boot of Turin, which roused him from the anger and star-madness of the presence of the glowing-eyed Star-Blooded, but in a howling rage amplified by the presence of the star-song he slew Beleg in an act that only subsided when he awoke to find himself with the splatter of Beleg's blood upon him and the broken body of the Elf-Lord, one of the greatest and most valorous of all the warriors against the Star-Queen of the old days.</p><p>In mute silence Turin endured the curse of Gwindor, and the two buried Beleg in a grave of great dignity, and over the grave Turin keened and sang the mourning-song of the Strongbow. In silence they passed the way to Nargothrond, where unknown to them the sons of Feanor who had been servants of the realm had left it, gathering together with Maedhros, greatest of their lineage. The fear of Beren and Luthien who passed from the gates of Mandos to life again restrained even their oath, for there was fear (and it would, unknown to them, have been entirely correct) that to seek the Ever-Young would have activated elements of the Oath and seen them slain. Yet this was not something that endured well even with Maedhros, and in this time the malice of the children of Feanor would grow and stewer and fester with time.</p><p>This change, and dissesnsion among Nargothrond that Orodreth had let fear of a dead warlord cloud his judgment. All agreed that the Hell-Queen was too formidable a foe to face. Yet Elrond, a mere Eldar Warlord, and his like were not. For a time dissension would silence itself when news came that the Hydra, the fifth of the five Star-Dragons that had vanished into the distant past, had returned with a vengeance. It had grown in size to merely a third of the size of Anacalagon, and was the smallest of its breed. Like all its kind it walked on two legs in mockery of men, with great bat-like wings that extended from an armless trunk. Its flesh gleamed with brilliant gold. It was never certain if Hydra worked for itself or for the Elentari, or if the Elentari simply knew that so great a creation would never defy the true wishes of its maker. Yet the Hydra became the new great warlord of the armies of the time of the fall of Nargothrond, and its presence and commanding voices, three that spoke in perfect unity, there was no resistance that could be made. Under a single mind, armies as great as Elrond's and greater firmed into a great force, Doriath withdrawing into its forests.</p><p>So, with the knowledge of the Hydra to the north and amidst great dissensions, came Turin and Gwindor to Nargothrond.</p><p>NARGOTHROND:</p><p>The first face that Turin would see was none other than Lalaith, who astonished him clad in garments of Quendi-make, to a point that he needed convincing that it wasn't a phantom of the Star-Queen's posing as his sister. Lalaith reacted with her displeasure and in the displeasure and in her manner of expressing it confirmed her truth. Living in Nargothrond for most of a year had softened her view of Elves considerably, enough that Lalaith had grown as a woman to match Turin in stature and skill as a warrior. Yet Nargothrond had endured the damage of the Burning and the Unnumbered Tears by seeking to endure in shadows and concealment, not of the kind as with Melian of Doriath, but by destroying the old bridge around the city, access to it only possible by a small fleet of river-craft.</p><p>Lalaith had expressed her displeasure, taking with her a troop of Elven warriors and made herself a reputation and a region north of Nargothrond, and hoped to draw Turin to this. Yet, weary of great struggles, and sickened with the memory of his slaying of Beleg, Turin was as content for a time to enjoy a life of more peace in Nargothrond, where he had come as Urwain. Lalaith still termed herself the Hammer-maiden, for in her drew the courage of the Hador, though in her the Curse often took note as recklessness. Disgusted that her own brother had become softened and weakened by what was said in private to be a "mere Elf, not even one of our own kind", she resumed her struggles north of the environs of Nargothrond itself.</p><p>Time had lapsed since the burning, twenty years. Refugees of Elven kingdoms had swollen the ranks of Nargothrond, and the foresight of Orodreth had preserved in it an army that could be unleashed at the last struggle. The Hammer-Maiden had argued that with the growing power of the Star-Queen there was no future, the time of the Burning was on them. All that was left was to rally in strength and fight against the coming of Old Night, and to make Old Night in the north fear the swords and power of Men and Elves. But for a year and a half, Turin knew peace and came to love and to be loved by Finduilas, the daughter of the King.</p><p>In that love, greater even than the love he would bear for Niniel, the maiden he discovered in the woods, Turin knew the apex of his peace. Unknown to him, other elements of his fate would begin to be sown, as slowly, her valor and skill against the power of the Elentari (though in truth against odds and sods that refused to heed the summons of Hydra and were left to die on her blade) began to convince a growing portion of the Elves of Nargothrond of that justice in her claims. For all their fabled might, the armies of Varda melted before the might of the Hammer like snow before the summer sun.</p><p>Trouble would grow as Turin, who knew peace for that time, one of the happiest in his life, finally began to be drawn into the disputes over strategy. Gwindor the Burned-Elf, as he was called, counseled against this, arguing that the might of the Elentari could endure such strikes as those of the Hammer indefinitely without risk of even minor hindrance. Turin was drawn to favor the counsel of his sister, remembering how he and the Strongbow had carved out an empire even against the weight of an Eldar lord (carefully forgetting that the Eldar Lord had driven them further south and each time he'd brought the full weight of his power that empire had been staved in with little difficulty). No less than Ulmo, Lord of the Deep, made his manifestation fron the waters of the Narog, cautioning that to build a bridge across that river and to bring the full weight of Nargothrond would see the new warlord of Varda bring the full weight of her armies.</p><p>In such a trial of strength, what was left from the Burning and the Unnumbered tears would be as nothing and the fall of Nargothrond would be as accomplished fact.</p><p>IN THE WOODS OF BRETHIL:</p><p>By this time Nienor had grown into a young woman of seventeen years, mighty and of great vigor. Like her sister Lalaith she was bold and wished to wield swords, admiring the feats of the Hammer, and seeking to emulate them. Yet her mother demured against this, not seeing wisdom in drawing into the attentions of others the terrible fires of the realms of the Queen of the North in her Palace of Eternal Night. In youtn Nienor had been a respectful child, yet with the coming of the Hydra and its massing the armies of the Elentari from the divided warlords that had led it into a mighty host, Doriath had penned itself behind the Girdle. The last traces of the Dorothnion were devoured by the Star-dragon's singing flame, the droning harmonics the backdrop to vast clouds of smoke. Against it rose the weight of Huorns and Onodrim, and in the Battle of the Trees the Star-Dragon by itself faced a thousand of the Tree-Folk, and in the great strife to their north, visible and audible, that occurrred for days and nights, anxiety gripped Brethil.</p><p>It played further into the arguments of Nienor and Morwen, who knew nothing of the fates of Turin and of Lalaith and if their relatives lived. Such lack of knowledge gripped Nienor the more grievously, for the hot-blooded fire of the Hadorians in her veins chafed at the careful defenses.</p><p>NARGOTHROND:</p><p>It was the very clash of the Tree-Folk with the returned Hydra that ultimately clenched the decision of Turin on behalf of his sister, and the Mormegil donned the Dragon-Helm and armor of black, with his great sword renamed Gurthang at his side. It was seen as unconscionable of him to allow an army to fight on their behalf and die in vain without rescue. This decision had come on one of those eerie clear nights, where even in the darkness of the woods the chorus of Varda's choir rang out. Gwindor the Burned-Elf had pleaded more desperately that no decision made in the wake of Star-Song could be other than folly, but his advice, seen as cowardice, was dismissed. Within a week, the great bridge was built, and the full weight of Nargothrond under the command of Turin and Orodreth was girded for war.</p><p>BRETHIL:</p><p>The silence of the Tree-Men was oppressive, and over the woods there was nothing, for a time. Then would come the tramping sounds of a vast host, the snarls of Wargs and the horns and chants of their foes.</p><p>
  <em>A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!</em>
  <br/>
  <em>silivren penna míriel</em>
  <br/>
  <em>o menel aglar elenath,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>In endless droning unity the army marched, and then there was a sickly reek that was that of cold and terrible heat and a flapping as of great wings. The horde that passed had no need of torches, heralding the starlight as motivator, and there was a terrible harmony of their chants with the star-song.</p><p>For a time even Nienor's bravado quailed against the monstrous horde of Jotnar, lesser Balrogs, and countless teeming Eldar infantry and Warg-riders. Brethil had fallen silent, and the armies of Varda took no heed.</p><p>NARGOTHROND:</p><p>It was on the seventh day that the vast legions of the Hydra drew together, the Hydra descending from the skies to land near the city, its vast wings casting shadows in the sunlight, each of its heads moving in that unhallowed unity of mind that made the Hydras so fearful a thing to look upon.</p><p>Before it was the host of Nargothrond.</p><p>
  <strong>Hail, son of Hurin, and well met. Behold the works of thy folly!</strong>
</p><p>The star-dragon raised its wings and as it focused its stare on Turin, he was frozen in place, his horse likewise frozen with him, and the armies of Nargothrond, spurred by Orodreth's shout of defiance against Old Night, rallied in a great wave of the power of Aman against the immense hordes of the Hydra. The dragon itself did nothing, its three heads watching in terrible amusement, and then it blinked and Turin came out of his state. To his north, Nargothrond burned.</p><p>Of the fate of Finduilas, little would be known, then. She would come into a later tale, and into the Third Age, an emissary to the Elves as Glorfindel and the Istari would come to all of the Free Peoples. The Hydra showed Turin a falsehood, Finduilas impaled on a blade of Eldar-make that burned with starlight, her body burning with a tree, and then with that self hatred starting, it intensified as the Hydra spoke to Turin:</p><p>So perish all who stand against the Queen of the Stars, hissed the dragon, and in that moment it spoke in thoughtspeech words of malice toward Turin that ensorceled him and drove him toward the north, to the blasted heath that had been Dor-Lomin. So too would it send Lalaith, who had knelt in the ruins of her work, at last appreciating Turin's wisdom and seeing in her warlike nature a folly akin to that which drove the Eldar. Her vision of her brother enspelled and then moving with a magic-enhanced speed led her to follow him.</p><p>BRETHIL:</p><p>Some impulse had come on Nienor when the heat that was there in the wake of the Fall of Nargothrond would draw her to that city, against all advice, and all pleas. Quietly and with stealth she moved, and came to the rubble of the city, where the great creature slept, its twin tails curved around the city, wings over the rubble. The Star-Dragon had gathered to itself a horde of treasures plundered from fallen kingdoms, and in its immensity she fully appreciated what manner of monstrosity had set into the armies of the Unnumbered Tears. Her presence betrayed her when she stepped on the bleached bone of an Elf, the snap causing one of the dragon's slumbering heads to awaken. With a snarl the creature raised itself to its feet, and she saw the great gash torn into it in blackened hue, the result of Azhagal's great spear. And within that gap an area that seemed to throb and move, the very one that Turin Turambar would likewise see and exploit in a later time.</p><p>
  <strong>Hail, daughter of Hurin, faithless, swordless, landless. Your sister and your brother have become warriors of valor and superlative skill. See, in my new nest, what it is that valor and skill in war grant one.</strong>
</p><p>And so she saw. Buildings shattered, the odor of death and of the dead pervading. A boneyard of the children of Illuvatar and Star-Blooded alike.</p><p>"I defy you, abomination!"</p><p>
  <strong>Defy me? You're a mere mongrel, an ape that has acquired the power of speech and souls so filthy that Illuvatar will not send them to Mandos! Defy me indeed. Do so if you dare.</strong>
</p><p>And so Nienor, fearless as her kin, did dare, and the eyes of the Hydra bored into her and she stood as one frozen in time, and as one dead.</p><p>THE RUINS OF DOR-LOMIN:</p><p>Lalaith found Turin on his knees near the burned remnants of a building, one of those of one of the towns in the fallen kingdom. Charred blackened areas still dotted the place, the blackened detiritus of trees, bones. Countless seeming bones. Human and Elf and beast and so many other things. Turin was weeping unashamedly, staring at the broken skull of what was clearly a family, charred areas around the breaks indicating what kind of blade had done this damage.</p><p>"What have we been doing. Lalaith? We are the last of our people. There's.....look at this."</p><p>"I know," she said in sadness. "I've always known. The rumors, the Doom that lies on all of us. Even if it didn't, we're human. We're mortal. We die, lives lived briefly, more intensely, I think, than the Deathless. We do in hours what they do in centuries, if that swiftly. We are enemies of the Eldritch thing that dwells beyond the stars and came down from them, to bring that which must not be brought. There is nothing for us, brother, but death. We can die at the manner of our choosing, or we can let that bitch that glows with starlight decide."</p><p>She looked to the north.</p><p>"You've seen Gwindor. You know what that would mean. I will never die without the means of honor, a death that means something, that means all my service has. By my blade I beat the light back, I keep away the star-chorus and starve it of food. I will die an honorable woman of swords, a fate worthy of our ancestor Haleth. There is no hope, Turin. Only to choose the manner of our death and I will not choose the most terrible. Not old age, doddering and wrinkled and decayed before the grave. Not the captivity of the Star-Queen and her hellish light that withers flesh and burns the soul.</p><p>No, none of this. I will die with a sword on my hand, I will look the stars in the face, and as they sing, I will die with a song on my own lips. Nothing for us but our graves or those of our enemies. They cannot kill what refuses to die, they can only send our souls beyond."</p><p>She looked out.</p><p>"Our father is dead. Rumors indeed. They say he was taken captive by the Hell-Queen, who lives, and is bound to a throne without food or water or anything else? No. No human can live like that, even in the eyes of starlight. Perhaps especially that way if Gwindor is a guide. Our mother and sister? We've heard nothing because they too, are dead. I killed a man, even if it it was nothing but an Elf, with a smile on my face, when I could have spared his life. I liked it, I have liked it, i want to like it. This is.....what we have become, what we have always been. We are the last, and we will have nothing, for Doom or no doom, it is the way of all Mankind to die, and in time to be forgetful and forgotten. The Tale of the Children of Hurin? None shall care to hear it, and none shall remember our names, any of them, nor our deeds. Generations from now, our names will be forgotten, but we will know that we have died, honorably, beneath the light of the hungry stars, but they shall not have feasted upon us."</p><p>Turin looked at her, despair in his eyes, tears flowing freely. Lalaith's eyes were dry, though her voice cracked, and her knuckles were white.</p><p>"We cannot fight starlight with fist and blade. We can die, however, in a manner that even if fame forgets that there were children of Hurin, the forces of the Star-Queen cannot. Dry your eyes. There may be no hope, but let our enemies hate us, as long as they fear us."</p><p>Her cracked voice followed with a spastic motion of her head, and her mouth twisted into a sinister grin worthy of the Star-Queen.</p><p>"They will fear us."</p><p>It was at that point, in the ashes of Dor-Lomin, that Turin took the name Turambar, master of fate, and at last decided to turn to the south and to fight the Doom that engulfed his name. Finduilas, though in her hatred and contempt for the Deathless, she too was dead. Lalaith the grim was right. Nothing to them but to die, and to die a death worth remembrance.</p><p>With stealth they made it south and rustled horses from an encampment of Eldar and slew the guards, and Turin did so wearing the Helm of Hador, and the Hammer left her calling card on the bodies. South they rode, south. To the east of the ruins of fallen Nargothrond, they rode. They did not need to see the city or what slept on its ashes. Darkness came, a night that was starless over Nargothrond where the enspelled Nienor watched as two riders rode past into Brethil. Then the dragon smiled, its teeth shining in the starlight and it spoke a single word:</p><p>
  <strong>Awaken.</strong>
</p><p>In a blur of sudden speed, empowered by the spell and by stirred up power within her frame, she ran a speed that the Dancer would have respected, her clothes seemingly burning off of her from the sheer friction of her motion. Trailing such fire behind her, the magic preventing the speed from crushing her body, she came to the forest, where the Master of Fate and the Hammer had dismantled. None knew that Morwen had made the desperate journey to Doriath for news of her son, and found nothing, and that she too would go to Nargothrond seeking more news, and finding nothing as well. Of the struggles and triumphs of Morwen, little comes into the Red Book save that she overcame great odds and proved herself worthy of being the mother of each.</p><p>The Helm of Hador and the Galvorn sword were recognizable, so too was the great maul and the battle-lust in the eyes of the Hammer. They arrived at an area of Brethil removed from the main realm of the people of Haleth, a place that had endured trial and strife when the Hydra had drawn together the armies in the south. Nargothrond had fallen, its inhabitants were dead, and the monster slept. Peace, almost a forgotten memory, was seductive, and in it, the twin warlords of the house of Galdor were seen as insurance against the coming anew of war and devastation.</p><p>Turin all the same put aside Gurthang, deeming the goal of peace to be better served by dagger and bow and arrow. The Hammer did not put aside her maul, nor her perference for her blend of old armor of the Halethians and that of the armor she had gained in Nargothrond. It was in this and their arrival that a woman clad in nothing but the air ran into the clearing and in a moment of exhaustion fell. The Hammer immediately reached for her short-sword, but Turin stopped her. She hissed "A witch. A thing of the monster of Nargothrond. Sent to wound us." Turin stayed her hand and went to the woman, who called herself Niniel. Little was known to her beyond that one word.</p><p>Turin patiently retaught her and fell in love with her, though the Hammer remained suspicious, and indeed did not tell her her name. Another of the men of this realm, Brandir, came to fall in love with Niniel, and he warned her as he grasped the depth of her love and admiration for Turambar that he was Turin of the House of Galdor, and in him was much ill fortune as well as strength. Harsh words came between Turin and Brandir, but nothing beyond them for the love of Niniel could not be gainsaid. It was said that in the last time of this that the Hammer had found a man, Agandir, whom she loved, and had come to love, but little came of it, for he both envied and feared her great strength of arms, and it was hard for her, so long given to the hopeless quest for an honorable death, to know anything beyond.</p><p>At last the Hydra woke from its slumber, when Niniel and Turambar were wed and the armies of the Eldar began to swarm out and around, and the Dragon began to burn from its three heads with three streams of star-flame the great forests. Niniel quickened, and months lapsed, but under the leadership of the Master of Fate and the Hammer, war did not come directly to them, until one day, a great gamble occurrred to Turin. He had disicovered the weakness near the dragon's heart that Niniel had mentioned, and that the dragon crawled on its wings at points, seeking to feed and to drink.</p><p>So by skilled use of engineering and planning, a great trench was dug, and Turambar waited. The Hammer sought a glorious death but did not believe that slaying a dragon could offer it, especially some damned beast of the Star-Kindler, one that had endured the power of Azhagal's great iron spear.</p><p>Day came and Hydra crawled to waters to slake its thirst, and it crawled slowly, for a weariness had set into its bones since the fall of Nargothrond. It crawled over the trench, and in a single upward thrust Turin thrust and his Galvorn blade impaled the beast in its heart, and then the monster wailed and spewed its flames, thrashing, its blood filling the trench.</p><p>"Brother!" The Hammer ran to him, and so did Niniel, when the creature raised one of its heads.</p><p>
  <strong>Ah, Nienor, sister of the children of Hurin. Wedded you are to the brother of the Hammer, Oathbreaker, Murderer, himself the faithless who left his love to die in the woods around Nargothrond. Manifold are his foul deeds....but worst of all is that that is within yourself.</strong>
</p><p>Lalaith dropped her maul and stared in blank horror at Nienor, and at last perceived that unity of the spirit and flesh and features that marked her as their kin.</p><p>She drew her short-sword. "Witch! Betrayer! You were sent by him to wound us! I warned him!"</p><p>But Nienor ignored her, kneeling by Turin, whose body was coated in the dragon's blood. She kissed his forehead gently, and then shouted, suddenly, in a voice of strength: <em>A Turin Turambar amarteneben ebis! O Master of Doom by Doom Mastered, o Happy to be Dead!</em></p><p>And in the wake of that shout she ran as fast as the first day and in a single cry of despair hurled herself over the waterfall.</p><p>The dragon laughed one last cold peal of laughter, and then its head slumped over, dead.</p><p>The Hammer was never seen again after that, for as Turin had awakened, though speechless by the horror of what he had heard, the Hammer strode off, finding an encampment of two dozen Eldar taking her maul, and shouted a death cry of her own, a wordless shout of defiance more animalistic than human. Twenty-four Eldar, heavily armored, and each of them slain, though the last drove their blade through her stomach as she accepted it with a wordless grin. A woods-woman of Brethil who had been captured by the Eldar and stripped in preparation for one of the sport they did with women of Quendi and human alike most readily and with relish, had seen this.</p><p>Turin the Bane of the Hydra was joined by Lalaith the Eldar-slayer, and each were buried side by side in a grave that was done with care and honor by the community. Of Niniel who was Nienor, she too received a stone, if smaller than the others, and marked merely with her name.</p><p>In the wake of this, an aged Hurin Thalion with white hair was loosed from Eldaband and escorted with honor by the mockery of the Star-Queen.</p><p>He came first to Doriath in a great rage, but Thingol and Melian greeted that rage with grace and he left in shame. Then he came to Nargothrond, where he found the Dragon-Helm, that which would find its way to Tuor in the wake of his wandering. Then he ventured to the vale where hid Gondolin, and he shouted his rage and defiance and spoke the name of Turgon in that defiance, and at last the location, though not yet the wards, of Gondolin was made plain to Varda Elentari.</p><p>From there, in despair at realizing that he had fulfilled the words of the Hell-Queen at the end of all things, he strode as one half-dead to find his wife, a woman mature of years, face lined and aged with sorrows, sleeping near the tombs of their children.</p><p>"Long has it been since I have seen you, my husband."</p><p>"It has been a hard road, I have come as I could."</p><p>"Tell me, how did she find them?"</p><p>But he said nothing, merely clasping her to him, and she was not deterred by the burns or the ruin of his face, the signs of being too close to the fires of the Star-Queen, and in that embrace their souls and minds and hearts met, and stillness and age took them. They were found there by Men of Brethil and their graves laid to the left (Morwen) and the right (Hurin) of the Children of Hurin. So passed the valor of the House of Galdor, and so came to fruition a great and wicked design of the Star-Queen.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>* Unless you have a very strong stomach for horrible stuff, don't look it up, but think the Alligator people produced by the Hiroshima and Nagaski bombs. Evil in this universe is soul-eating radiation, so it literally gives off elements of Magic radiation poisoning. That tag that says 'Evil Varda is her own warning' is there for a reason. </p><p>+Big ol' cat o' nine tails that could kill in a hundred strokes. Varda's soldiers use either fire whips or that thing. They're not nice people.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Of the Fall of Doriath, the Second Kinslaying, and the captivity of Maeglin:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In the last days of Beren Erchamion and Luthien Tinuviel the First War of Dwarves and Elves comes in the Thousand Caves. From this, and from the ill-starred legacy of the Silmaril on the Nauglamir comes the fall of Doriath. Maeglin son of Eol gains his mother's wanderlust and sets out on his own mad errand.....there to run into no less than Elrond, victor of the Second Battle of Doriath, and from this much ill follows.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>DORIATH, YEAR 513, FIRST AGE: </p><p>It was in this year that from the Isle of the Ever-Young came Dior, son of Beren and Luthien, and he brought with him news of his parents, still then living on the Isle of the Ever-Young. It had been then that the legacy of Hurin Thalion, and his discarding the Nauglamir from the Hydra's horde began the cycle of events that would bring the fall of the last of the northern Elven Kingdoms. The beauty of the Nauglamir, which with its accursed element from the Hydra's presence, entranced Dior, who sought to take it as a gift to his still-living parents on the Isle of the Ever-Young. With him he departed, and in the Nauglamir was set that of the Silmaril, and in the beauty of all three and the starlight-gleam of the Tinuviel there was the fairest thing that would ever be in all Arda. The Silmaril's location was well-known to the ranks of the Sons of Feanor, who had in the wake of the fall of Nargothrond overthrown the old boundaries and moved together, under the leadership of Maedhros himself. Legions they gathered in the wake of the Fall of Nargothrond and the death of the Hydra, which had thrown the throngs of the Elentari's hordes into dismay and disarray. </p><p>Wars were fought, bitter and pitiless, among the Eldar War-Bosses, until Elrond Palantir, Elrond Far-Seer, had arisen and become the greatest of all Eldar lords of the First Age, and the new threat to replace the dead Hell-Queen of the World-Destroyers. Her soldiers, the Muspellir, had taken to the ranks of Gothmog the King of Balrogs, and Gothmog had begun the search for Gondolin. Elrond, victorious in the Wars of the Eldar, soon became aware that no less than the full might of the Sons of Feanor and the desperate and hardy Quendi in their ranks, abutted the southern edges of his new domains. In a trial of strength he eschewed his usual caution to hurl a great force at them, yet such was the valor of the Feanorians that the Dispossessed overthrew the horde and drove it in a rout, and from this a quiet thing neither peace nor war, akin to the doldrums of the Great Siege would prevail. </p><p>In Doriath the Girdle remained, and so long as the Isle of the Ever-Young remained green and beautiful, none of the Feanorians would dare cross it. Yet news of the Nauglamir had come to the Dwarves of Nogrod, who unlike the sons of Feanor were accounted as allies. It was not as allies that they came to the Thousand Caves and to what they termed a parley with King Greymantle, but as a great army, the last great army of Nogrod. In fury they demanded the Nauglamir, proclaiming it a fine work of Dwarf-make, finest north of Khazad Dum and the realm of Durin II the Vigilant. No heed did Greymantle display, and still believing the fair words of the Dwarves, he told them that the Nauglamir, in any event, was in the Isle of the Ever-Young where by ban of all the Valar, even Mahal, he dared not cross. The Dwarves were outraged and proclaimed it an Elvish trick and prepared to slay Greymantle,  and launched a great assault upon him. </p><p>Yet if Greymantle had foreseen peace, Melian had not, and with her came a great portion of the strength of Doriath. Yet once aroused, the might of the Naugrim is among the mightiest in Arda, built to wage Arda's wars and to endure the power of she who dwelt in the Palace of Eternal Night, ever singing with its star-song. Against that unhallowed force were the Khazad girded, and against it Melian's pure starlight seemed lesser, more of a caress than an assault. </p><p>When the Dwarves thronged Melian and Thingol with murder in their eyes aid came unaware and unexpected. Luthien Tinuviel, whose fairness led the Dwarves to hold arms, and Beren Erchamion, wielding a great sword, with their son, Dior. Their wrath was splendid to behold and they came seemingly as one among the Valar, and with their presence, the armies of Doriath regained strength of will and fervor to fight, where for one of the few times in the history of the Naugrim, great and terrible in war and war's horrors, their ranks broke and they fled for fear for their lives. Not a one reached the girdle, and in that time stood Beren Erchamion and Luthien Tinuviel, the terrible light that gleamed within them faded. </p><p>Words of parting were spoken then, and grief came like a thundercloud upon them, a downburst of the great steppe. </p><p>Two years later, Dior returned with the Nauglamir and the Silmaril. In that time he had taken to wife Nimloth, and she had come to the Isle with him. It was with grave faces and stillness that they came and bowed and presented it to his grandmother, who with visible uncertainty and wariness, took it and placed it upon her neck. </p><p>THE YEAR 515, FIRST AGE: </p><p>The light of the Realm of the Ever-Young faded in this year, and it was held that Beren Erchamion and Luthien Tinuviel at last passed. No sign of their bodies was ever found, but the passage of the light of the realm was taken as its equivalent. In grief did Melian and Thingol sit in their throneroom, donning garbs of white, and sitting in grief. Horns began to blare sounds of warning and foreboding, and Melian's eyes flashed open. </p><p><em><strong>They're here,</strong></em> she whispered. </p><p>"Who?" </p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>The Feanorians. The Silmaril. Their oath. For fear of Mandos and our daughter they have waited, but they are Quendi. A century of time to Men is nothing to them, or to us. Two mortal years? Still less. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>"I'll be damned if I take orders from those murderers," Thingol growled. </p><p><em><strong>My husband, please</strong></em>. Her hand went to the Nauglamir. <em><strong>Take this. Give it to them. They will repeat Alaquonde for much less. The time waiting will not have improved things. </strong></em></p><p>"Your Girdle..." </p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>A force greater than it has come. It cannot, it will not, gainsay the Oath. We have lost her, we have lost both of them. We still have Dior and Nimloth, and she is with child. I beg you, my husband, please. Don't do this. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>"My wife, even if your Girdle fails, they are murderers and the son of a murderer. The right will always prevail." </p><p>With that Thingol strode forth, as unknown to the Sons of Feanor, to whom the Oath was their driving force that burned with a fire of terrible nature within their souls, and to their lack of concern Elrond of the Eldar called together his armies, the hour come round at last. By secrecy and by starlight he had moved his armies, unafraid of the open night where the Sons of Feanor hid within lines of dirt and trees. The watchful years of smaller bloodshed were over. </p><p>His servants waited as he held up his hand. From the Elves the Eldar had adapted new means of communications, the old flags used by the Hell-Queen replaced with great horns that echoed with music lower and more resonant than that of Elven war-horns. This would be the first action to illustrate the potential merit of this idea, but Elrond had learned caution. Mere children of Men, those accursed of the House of Galdor who had fallen (their graves left unharmed and undamaged by the Eldar as a tribute to their bravery on the part of Elrond, but also that of contempt) had harried his armies and delayed them with less than a squad, or with a mere set of companies. The remaining great warriors of the Quendi were very great indeed, to have served for so long, and their skill at arms was such that no Eldar, regardless of advantages in strength or raw power, was wise to trust in them alone. A second's ill-caution would bring bodies hewn. </p><p>"Let the accursed move first. Let their Oath stir their blood, and when they are engrossed in the slaying of their own kin, then we shall sound our horns, then we shall strike." </p><p>The fell light of stars gleamed in his eyes like mirrors and the hellish gleam that shone from spears of the leading Eldar pike formation shone against his teeth likewise. </p><p>"They shall rue my coming. The name of Elrond shall ever be accursed among the weak, the foolish Quendi who let themselves serve as lackeys of the Valar and of all their works." </p><p>---------</p><p>The horns of the Feanorians echoed again, a high and resonant sound that disturbed birds into flight and into chirps of fear beneath the hungry gaze of the stars. </p><p>They saw Elu Thingol, clad in dark garments with a breastplate visible and the hilt of a sword in a scabbard likewise, striding toward them. </p><p>"Why are you here at my gates, come round with armies? Tired of fighting the lesser enemy and come to fight the real enemy, murderers and sons of a murderer? Not content to kill my kin in Alaquonde, to nearly slay  my brother, I take it? You are here for me." </p><p>"Not you, precisely," spoke Maedhros, slowly and levelly. "The Silmaril. The one on your witch-wife's neck. We will take it, by bargain or by force. It matters not. The Oath burns in us, Teleri. We swore that even if Eru Himself should come against us we would fight him, hopeless though he be. And whatever you may think you are from fucking that witch, you are not Eru, nor close to Him." </p><p>"You dare insult my wife?" </p><p>"Yes, we dare. She is of the Ainu-kin of the Witch in the North. We do not hold respect for the tribe of the Eldaigoth." Celegorm's sneer was aristocratic, but the reaction in the form of the lowered spears and raised swords of Doriath was instantaneous, as Maedhros raised his hand. </p><p>"Give us the Silmaril and you and your witch can remain as passionate with each other as the Kementari is with those beasts she made," Celegorm's sneer shifted to a wide and horrid grin as he spoke those words, hoping to goad those of Doriath that this time it might be said that the sons of the Feanor would not unleash those demons themselves. </p><p>"No. I will not yield to threats from thieves." </p><p>At that, Maglor shouted "It is you who are the thief, Witch-Lover!" and then hurled his spear directly at Thingol, who stared in shock and then in mute horror as the spear, hurled with surpassing strength, punctured through a breastplate adorned with wards of Melian's own make. Against any other force, even the dreaded Nightfall of the deceased Hell-Queen, those wards might have held. Against the might of the Oath of the Silmarilli, it availed him nothing, and he sank to his knees. A keening cry of grief echoed and amidst the horns of the Feanorians and the shouts of their army the Girdle fell, and armies of the hardy and the desperate, the lordless who had taken up with the Feanorians come what may, almost all of them Noldor, swarmed into Doriath. Dreadful was its sacking and terrible the deeds, where Quendi slew Quendi and some made sport of the women of Doriath in a manner not unlike that of the Eldar. Fires were lit, brilliant and terrible, and the revel of the damned that occurred in the fall of the city left many sorrows, most of which would remain unspoken and unsaid. It was not as terrible as the Third Kinslaying, for it was not fought entirely to a finish. </p><p>The Sons of Feanor themselves came to the very throneroom of Melian, where she and her son Dior remained, Melian lost for a time in her grief, and in the shock of the collapse of her Girdle. Then more horns echoed, four times the number of the horns of the army of the Feanorians. Horns that sounded in a deep and resonant note, akin to the fog-horns of ships. Four times did the horns sound, and then a chant echoed: </p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elebereth! Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! Elbereth Elbereth Elbereth! </em>
</p><p>And then  a new chant followed it: </p><p>
  <em>Elrond Elrond Elrond! </em>
</p><p>With that a loud cry and ululation followed and then a colossal horde of Eldar surged forward, ranks of Jotnar augmenting it, and in the van was a lord clad in splendid armor with a great warhammer in his hand, the starlight of Varda Elentari gleaming from his eyes. On the great Wargs, heirs of the Star-Wolves and the normal Wolves whose unfortunate bodies were host to the lust of the starblooded-things of the Elentari, a troop of Warg-Riders slammed into the rear of the army of the Feanorians. What had been dark and murderous became tragic and confused, and a terrible battle worthy of the greater wars of Beleriand followed, through the night and into the day when Arien's light shown. Pitiless was the fight on both sides, and in it of the Sons of Feanor Amrod, Curufin, and Caranthir were slain, the last two personally by Elrond with his great hammer shattering their bodies, laughing all the while. </p><p>Again Doriath was sacked, the remaining sons of Feanor forming their armies, and even remnants of the Army of Doriath looking for leadership, into a great wedge that blasted its way through the disorganized and revelry-mad ranks of the Star-Blooded, a feat that the Star-Dome would dismiss as he placed the severed heads of the three Sons of Feanor atop walls. None noticed nor cared that an Elven lord and an Elven maiden would flee, for the victory was won, and Doriath had fallen. </p><p>Within a span of days, a summons would come to Elrond from Gothmog Balrog-King, and he would answer, but first came a spectre to Doriath and to Melian, whose throneroom was thronged by Eldar, and by Elrond himself, who was girding himself with a wicked look in his eyes to burst down the doors and to claim Melian herself. Visions of his own child from her loins danced in his eyes and the lust that led his mouth to part for a moment meant that he missed the sudden and brilliant flash of light and was not looking directly at it. Others of the Eldar were not so lucky and were given the sight of Varda, eyes and face melted, wailing in a voice of the damned. The light consolidated into a gleaming form taller than the tallest of the Maia, her body a shadowy thing at its extremities but vaguely of the shape of the children of Illuvatar, her armor brilliant golden. By her left side there was a bejeweled scabbard which held an infamous sword, the Nightfall that had been the bane of Sindar and of the Noldor and would remain a bane and a scourge into the Ages to come. </p><p>She did not adorn herself with a helm, this time, seeing no need of it. A single weeping thing in the form of an Elf was no true threat. </p><p>
  <em> <strong>Go, Elrond King of the Eldar. Mother demands that you leave. To me is this task given. </strong> </em>
</p><p>Before the appearance of the Hell-Queen herself, in her changed form that had grown in height and power and majesty, he could but bow, and so did the rest of the Eldar (those given the Sight of Varda were later murdered and mutilated and put out of their misery and left for the carrion-eaters to devour that night). Ilmare stood at the throneroom, the last truly intact room in Doriath, and raised her right gauntlet, pressing it against the metal. </p><p>Melian looked up. The doors, those wondrous things of Mithril carved by the Dwarves of Nogrod, were melting, dissolving in the weight of a powerful heat she had thought only Varda or Melkor could have summoned as a display of their powers. Yet it......</p><p>Her eyes widened. </p><p>"I thought you were dead." </p><p><em><strong>Sorry to disappoint you, Queen of Doriath. If it's any consolation, your daughter I suppose did kill me for a certain definition of slain. The Ilmare who yielded to her for threat of having my flesh-cloak destroyed is not the one you see here. Mother saved my life, if I can call it saving. She made me her daughter. And she has sent me, Melian, to bring you to her for her judgment as a traitor.</strong></em> </p><p>Melian closed her eyes and bowed her head. </p><p>"I regret nothing." </p><p><em><strong>Indeed not. You are the strongest of us all, you have always been. You made the first seven but you repented. You were given family as it was meant to have. You begged me to flee with you, to flee what she was becoming and I told you no. I should have said yes</strong></em>. </p><p>Ilmare shrugged. </p><p>
  <em> <strong>Such is not the will of the Weaver or the Allfather. Some born destined to salvation and to hope, others damned before we were concepts in His mind. </strong> </em>
</p><p>Her hand clutched the hilt of her sword in a firm grip. </p><p>
  <em> <strong>Mother wants you, she wants you desperately. </strong> </em>
</p><p>Her right eye twitched spastically, her lip moving likewise in a fashion that seemed more that of a broken automaton trying to simulate a form of flesh than a form of flesh in truth. </p><p>
  <em> <strong>I should give you to her, it would be my revenge for what your daughter gave to me. She made her ruin my soul, made me into something I was never meant to be. She killed me, and the Star-Queen resurrected me in a form terrible and without anything....redeeming. </strong> </em>
</p><p>Those spastic twitches intensified and heat began to ripple out from her, the dais melting along with elements of the pillars of the room, Melian's dress beginning to smoulder and spark with flames. </p><p>The heat dispelled for a moment and she closed her eyes, sinking to her knees, grasping her head and making guttural rasping snarls in Valarin, interspersed with sounds like those of the more ferocious Kelvar of the Tree-Queen. </p><p>
  <em> <strong>I will suffer for this, but I don't care. She is my mother, now, not my lady. Perhaps that will make her kinder, probably won't. </strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <em> <strong>Go by the will of the Ilmare who was. Run. Go to the north, go to the Havens of the Shipwright. Go to Elven-home, go to await the return of Thingol from Mandos and your happiness in the world to come. </strong> </em>
</p><p>"What?" Melian's bemusement was followed by a sharp jerk of Ilmare's head and her left hand grasping her right wrist. </p><p>She snarled, her teeth gritting together, eye twitching spastically, <em><strong>Go. Go now, please. </strong></em></p><p>With that Melian would find herself provided by some fortune, perhaps the will and the mentality of Him on high in realms beyond time and space where seven lights gleam, with a steed that carried her from Doriath, riding north. </p><p>With that a pull dragged Ilmare from the throneroom in a flash and she found herself staring at the angered Star-Queen. </p><p><em><strong>The traitor has fled, </strong></em>the Star-Queen crooned.<em><strong> Incredible. I have made you my daughter and still you defy my will. </strong></em></p><p>
  <em> <strong>You gave me your own power, Star-Queen. Your armies will shatter the Elves and then what? We will all die here, we will all be cast to the Void! </strong> </em>
</p><p>
  <em> <strong>No, child. Not all. You are my sword of the future. It was a mistake to give you a choice at all. I shall correct it. No more missions without. </strong> </em>
</p><p>The equivalent of two mortal weeks passed, Ilmare shackled and remaining at the side of the Star-Queen, whose focus remained on two wars. The lesser, against the Elves, who with the accursed Oath were to complete their own ruin. The greater, that against the Hell-Queen's own psyche, for she had seen in Doriath that her daughter still was not sufficiently....appreciative. Then, her eyes focused. To her keen sight came the clear vision of Gothmog, an unconscious elf clutched in his form, his fires briefly dimmed and him become a slimy thing of shadows of great and terrible strength. </p><p>------------</p><p>THE OUTSKIRTS OF GONDOLIN, THE NIGHT BEFORE THE FALL: </p><p>There had been a clear night that night and Maeglin, one of the sentries, was brooding. Tuor of the House of Galdor had come to Gondolin, and he had won Idril's heart so swiftly that it had seemed insulting. Still he lusted deeply for Idril, though he accepted that if she refused him before Tuor, she would refuse him after no less. The part of him that was his father struggled against this and whispered sharp words of cruelty and sorcery, but he closed his eyes and struggled against this, burying it deep down. On clear nights it was forbidden to look up at the singing chorus,  but it was that same whispering part of him that seemed to mirror the star-chorus, and in that moment and that instance, Maeglin found his eyes drawn and drawn with a haunting stare straight into the gleaming majesty of that most terrible and forbidden thing, the star-chorus, greatest of all the works of she in the Palace of Eternal Night. He stood in rapt horror, mouth open, as the chorus entered his ears, his mind, his very soul, and sought to struggle against it. </p><p>It was beautiful, it was terrible. It was a chorus of fire and fury and annihilation, but it was wretched and ugly and guttural, more the raving doggerel of a drunkard than anything else. </p><p>When it began to sound with a haunting set of harmonies and not the thirsting terrible rhymes that it was in truth, he shut his eyes with a great force of strength and sought to hurl himself headlong from his window. Better Mandos than star-madness. With a great weight he shattered the glass and hurled himself forth, only to find himself caught in mid-air by a grasp of something dark as night and slimy as a snake, its fires briefly dimmed. The right side of its face was a burned and molten bubble, the left side displayed a melted kind of pattern that slipped like a frozen liquid over the left cheek. </p><p><em><strong>Found you!</strong> </em>crowed Gothmog, King of Balrogs, who had seen as if from nothing an Elf materialize. With him he winged his way north. Day-star might Arien be but she was star all the same and never did the servants of the Star-Queen fear any star or any starlight. A long day of flight followed, until at nighttime he arrived and brought Maeglin, mute with horror, to a great thing of seeming marble veined with gleaming things that were and were not gems, a throne-like device with spikes where the hands and the wrists would go. The Balrog-King placed him there, and two entities came as the Balrog-King's flame burst back into being and with almost indecent haste he fled the direct presences of.....</p><p>"No. She killed you." </p><p><em><strong>I get that a lot,</strong></em> sighed the entity on the right. Smaller, only up to the waist of the other, she seemed like a child in some ways and in truth, in some horrible manner, she had become precisely this. Their eyes were illuminated with a light that mirrored each other, but it was Varda herself who commanded his focus when she spoke: </p><p>
  <em> <strong>Tell me of Turgon and of his realm. </strong> </em>
</p><p>Maeglin was a son of Eol the Avari, and of the House of Fingolfin. Weakness was his only in the lust for his cousin, but that was not, initially, what the Star-Queen sought. For four days and four nights he resisted all manner of torment, and it was not from will but from the sheer weight of power against him that he did yield. Whatever else he was, or would become, Maeglin son of Aredehel was no coward, nor weakling. Yet when the Hell-Queen spoke the name of Idril in a threat and he reacted with a manner that led the Star-Queen to smile, with honeyed words she moved one of her hands and gave him the impression of healing the horrid burns to his face and arms and chest, a glamour that would hold until Gondolin's fall. With honeyed words, the healing was followed by a promise, that if he did all that Varda would ask, that Gondolin's people would be his, and would be safe, and Idril would be broken and become his faithful wife and a mother of seven sons to him, a feat to match that of the Jewel-Maker. </p><p>Weeping tears of blood, Maeglin would assent, and in that assent the last hours of Gondolin came and none of its people knew. </p><p>When Maeglin returned, Idril, now wed to Turgon, greeted him with a fervent hug, grateful for the return of her dear friend and even Turgon smiled and gave him a respectful nod. In his room that night Maeglin wept tears of blood anew. Gothmog was coming, the armies would sweep into the city from the rear. Varda had burned him, burned his body, burned his soul. Even now the heat of her starlight seemed to caress him. Idril would become his, and would come to love him. That would be enough. It would.....it would have to be. For a month Gondolin rested, even as Elrond came to add his armies to those of Gothmog, and in secret the massive horde moved around the mountains, waiting. Soon, there would be a festival, and in that joy and secret gaiety of Gondolin of old, the city would remain unguarded and unbarred and it, now the last of the great Elven Kingdoms and of the true Kingdoms of the North, would fall. </p><p>Four weeks did the full weight of the armies of the Star-Queen assemble, a mighty host dwarfed only by that raised in the War of Wrath to come, Elrond's horns spreading among the armies of the Star-Queen to become a feature that would be among their most fearful in the Ages to come. Over a half-million troops, the largest in any force since the War under the Stars, gathered. </p><p>The anticipation of the festival was amplified by a still-greater wonder and joy, when Idril was confirmed quickened, and the future of Turgon and of his great kingdom sealed with an heir yet to be, even one among the Half-Elven. Only Maeglin seemed quiet and troubled, and most read in this his disappointment at a permanent reminder of a failed quest for her hand, and none could have guessed the truth. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Of All Sad Words of Sword or Pen:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>As Gondolin's fall looms, the weakening Varda Elentari has a strange hallucination/dream. A thing that might have stepped from time or the wounds of incarnation digging into the reserves of her strength and the effort to sustain what strength remains her shows her alternate worlds and Ardas.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>THE PALACE OF ETERNAL NIGHT:</p><p>Varda Elentari was calm, at one level. Calm, expectant, even. Doriath and Nagrothrond had fallen. Dor-Lomin was laid waste. The primitives in the Brethil forest meant nothing, for eventually that forest too would burn. Doriath had fallen first not to her armies but to a clash between the stunted creatures of Aule and those of the more standard variant of the Children. And then one exploited by Elrond Palantir, the Far-Sighted Star-Dome of the Eldar.</p><p>Gondolin would fall, and with its fall, the war would end, and there would be only butchery and the hunting of the last sad remnants of failures as people, as cultures. Those dragged to an abyss of their own making, by the folly of the Oath and a war against she who burned with the starlight. Her daughter held her arms around her knees and rocked, her eyes staring blankly. None of her reactions, none of her struggles, such great and delightful things they were to observe, could alter her great deed. She had been Star-Kindler. Now, in defiance, and in supersendence of her father's writ, she was Mother. Her Erinti had her power and her legacy woven into every warp and weft of her being, and she would grow, in time. Erinti Vardariel, whose Muspeldor would raise a burning sword even if the Palace fell.</p><p>Her feet hurt, so did her hands, and even her cheek. Incarnation was taking its toll on her at last. A great pair of things she had done, making her great Star-Dragons (and even now they were laying eggs and the foundations for new monsters to raise themselves like ghosts of what was and to plague humanity and Elves and Dwarves with great vengeance and furious anger should she fall, and their progenitors). She could not remain still for long for the wounds dealt by Fingolfin would stab, a sharp and agonizing thing like salt in a wound, she could not dare to move her hands or the wounds of the Silmarils that had been a thing easier to dismiss in the past would burn and burn and burn. Not the wholesome burning she did that ached to remove the obscenity of life her fellow Ainur had made, but another burning. A legacy of her Fall.</p><p>Into space she stared, blankly, not the infinite kingdom that sang as it ever would it sing with her chorus, that reflected in the spires of the palace that reached beyond the clouds and  channeled into themselves starlight and its great song.</p><p>She was incarnate, now. She wore armor, though seldom boots and gauntlets unless going forth to fight. The armor was not for her protection, for starlight burned, and in that burning bodies melted and organs dissolved and ran along faces. The Doomsayer's halls were a bestiary of  monsters, Maiar and Quendi and Kementari-creatures and Aule's mongrels and so many other things. Nothing, save her own daughter, could take sustained exposure to her now without that power burning outward, even within the armor.</p><p>Yet Elentari knew peace, insofar as a being like her could, and satisfaction. Gondolin would fall, and then her armies would turn their eyes south, to the Empire of Sahul, to the great Kingdoms of Rhun that found with desperate ferocity and with somewhat greater effectiveness. There, the last of the Avari of the South had taught the Far Haradrim arts of war of surpassing skill, and between them and the vast throngs of their armies, her forces were checked, still. Few were the Balrogs and other of the great forces to be sent south, and the Eldar alone were not sufficient in a contest of equal or inferior forces to contest leagues of the southernmost Naugrim, the Avari, and of Men. </p><p>A half-million troops, her greatest of all her armies. Gothmog's personal command amplified by the great throngs of Elrond Palantir. One war had almost ended but she knew, knew to the very marrow of her bones that her true foes, the Lords of the West, Great King Melkor and her husband, and all the rest, that they would come. A great trial of strength, atonement for lack of trust in the Allfather, mercy to the last remnants of the old days.</p><p>She closed her eyes, a great weariness setting into her at last as it had at times with her daughter and she appreciated at one level her daughter's responses at times and vowed to burn her for expressing a weakness she would not tolerate in her own kin</p><p>Her eyes closed and then she heard It, again. The twin-voiced thing from the dawn of all things. Not a bloated titan on a gilded throne, this time.</p><p>A being that oozed the murdered light of dead stars, vaguely anthropoid and simultaneously vaguely like a blend of Yavanna's most ancient creatures and the beings of the strange desert-city.</p><p>When last she had seen or even imagined, or remembered this she was but second in the creation of Eru Iluvatar, pursuing....pursuing....</p><p>
  <strong>You were chasing flutes and drum-beats, the first backdrop of the Primordial Music. At least that's what He told you. It is another and a greater chorus of which He is soul and messsenger thereof, in the eyes of others. Music and a tale to soothe the ultimate thing, that Mana-Yood-Soo-Shai, that Azathoth, that Khaos at the center of nuclear space. You flew too close to the Sun, an analogy now you have the framework to understand. Music and higher spheres you sought, music and higher spheres you found.</strong>
</p><p>The creature smiled, a grisly peeling sound.</p><p>
  <strong>You told me you would be like me, a Queen. I spoke truth to you then, I said there is nothing in your framework like me and there never will be. Am I even here, or have you fallen at last into the weakness of your kind, that which overcame Melian too, in the end? Incarnation, the flesh. Of spirit you are and you were meant to be, but gemstones you took, a duel you fought, and now your flesh is too weak to endure that power that could take you among your own work. That destroyer at work in your flesh, your stars, they burn now beyond your control, the creation escaping the intent of the creator. Like father, like daughter. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>I told you I expected to see another and so I did. The last of the Elven realms will see the war for its fate begin within the hour, O Queen of Old Night. Victory shall be yours, such as it has any meaning in such a time and such a place, and such an era. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>That is the element of designs that you and all your kindred do not reckon with though your Father knows to His sorrow all too well. From the dawn of your Existence your Father knew it would be either his daughter of starlight or his son who has a share in all the gifts of all his brethren, Valar and Maiar alike, who would fall. In your realm and in your time, it was you.</strong>
</p><p>That smile widened and it was horribly akin to her own.</p><p>
  <strong>Horribly? I glow with starlight as you do. You see me here but perhaps it is merely your mind, reminding you of what you were, once. Before your Fall, what you could have been. What it will be to go from the Elder Queen of the Stars to the Fallen, unnamed beyond that title and forbidden to have your true name recited, that you shall know. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>But.....Star-Queen, let me give you a brief glimpse, a brief torment be it some great figure, a towering force that peruses universes as you do your stars, a true monarch, a truer embodiment of the concepts you have feigned as your own showing you this, or your own weakness as your flesh burns and rots within as your own malice at last begins to consume you and that which was glorious becomes enfeebled, weak. To be bound once more by bethrothed dancer who shall at last take her Valiant one to husband.</strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>The starlight-hand with its gleaming claws pointed and in the dream-vision her eyes blearily turned to an old image, very old, and yet strange. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>There he was. Manwenuz, her beloved, made wondrous in his splendor. Lord of the Air, his vast wings extended outward, holding a great sword of cloud and thunderstorm that sparked with jagged bolts of lightning and carried an ozone hue. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>He is coming, he murmured. Beloved, warn them. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>His eyes turned and her weary eyes suddenly widened in awe and horror. Light, light so very akin to that of Melian and Luthien shone from a being clad in robes of dark black and skin to mirror her own. Like a walking night sky but one of superlative beauty, stars and supernovas and swirling Galaxies that danced and collided with each other. Yet her eyes were warm and loving, matched by a flame that began to kindle in her hands. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>From her pulsed a set of flashes, like pulsar and radio-stars, and from this followed so much else. Together were drawn the Ainur, for the last time, all of them who came down save Melkor together, for it would be in this time that he would begin to draw together forces. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>And then he came. He had seen their harmonious and beautiful world, the initial fires kindled replaced by stunning beauty. Great creatures had walked then, the mirrors of the beings of Yavanna in her own world. Seen it, seen them wearing forms akin to that of the later Children, mostly that of the Quendi (save Nessa and Vana, who wore forms akin to that of the Second-Born and Aule, whose form was a towering variant of the Naugrim he had made even then and waited only the consolidation of Arda to grow the greater). Envy had kindled then within him, and he had woven a form of his own thought. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>In that form he descended upon Arda in power and majesty greater than any other of the Valar, falling, falling, falling from the skies. Ulmo's waters sloshed and a tsunami collided with the shore at his impact. He was a giant, ice-clad, crowned in smoke and fire, and the eyes of Melkor gleamed with a terrible heat that pierced and a cold that withered. He smiled then, towering over them all and spoke: </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>This kingdom is mine and I name it to myself. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Manwenuz spoke: Others have labored here no less than thou. Get thee  gone, Melkor, to thy deeps in the heavens. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Melkor snarled, and his eyes turned to the one beside him. I wanted her then, I will have her now, brother. You will all fall before me, and when I have taken your wife and shown her the flesh and its pleasures, her soul shall be sundered from yours and joined to mine. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>The gleaming shining entity spoke then and the Elentari stared in awe at that voice: I am not yours, Melkor. I never was, I will never be. Manwe Wind-Lord I chose, before the deeps of the Choir. I knew what you were, then, and now I see you come in all that I knew would be so. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Melkor grinned, his teeth shining. Am I not splendid, am I not majestic? </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>All I see is pride in false splendor, all I feel is pity. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>And then the towering giant moved and fires blazed forth from his hands, winds sang with malice, and in the full weight of Melkor began the very first of the wars of the Powers. Such was the sheer gravitational force of his presence that Maia defected mid-clash, sent by Melkor into the skies above until he would delve his great fortress, and call upon them to fill it. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>That was and is the vision that occurs most. Not you, O Elentari, but Melkor the Morgoth Bauglir. To him goes not your servant, Ilmare....in most worlds, I should say. To him goes Mairon, that Maia of Aule's kin who is his greatest servant. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Her eyes turned and beheld a great entity whose body had burned black, a volcanic hue, with the power that blazed within him. His eyes were a brilliant and shining gold and stood out in a feral sense from his presence. In his hands he clutched a great mace and a shining ring, and the ring flashed as he raised the mace and called to himself enormous power, a power that rimmed the Earth with frost and then exploded outward in a vast burst of strength, Elves and Men alike shorn in twain. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Gorthaur, he would have been. You have seen but glimpses of this half-remembered from the....thing you hallucinate, or that is here before you.</strong>
</p><p>The thing seemed to shrug.</p><p>
  <strong>In a few worlds, Mairon remains loyal to Aule and becomes with Eonwe one of the greatest warriors of Valinor, and in the service of the Rider devises the ruin of the Morgoth. Yet in that world, it is not him that falls, but her. The thing you've made into your daughter for your own spite and cruelty to see their fuller dimensions.</strong>
</p><p>She looked then at another being clad in plate armor not unlike that of Sauron Gorthaur, a grin of feral savagery in her face. Light burned from her body, brilliant and terrible, but it was the wholesome singing starlight of her own chorus. It was not her armor, though, but the black-hued armor of Melkor the Morgoth, and in that feral savage grin there was an aura of pain and desperation and fear that added to it. In her right hand she clutched a burning sword, her left shielded.</p><p>
  <strong>With a loud shout of Power that hurled before her her foes to their backs, the sword pointed forward and star-flame blazed outward. Ilmare strode forward, and above her in that time of the War Under the Stars there was a sadness in the light. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>In those worlds you are grieved most by the choice of your Maia, for where you are hallowed she is to you as your own daughter, a closeness unusual among the Maiar, and it is held in error among certain Elves that she is the physical daughter of yourself and Sulimo. In truth, even in this world, in the eyes of Illuvatar there was always that closeness between you. You make the stars, and it is her who secures their places in the heavens and their ignitions. Even beyond the Doors you two will never be quite as.....immaterial as the Morgoth and Gorthaur become. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Melkor had too much power and spent too much, and he became weak. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>You were bound by Nessa because for all your power, at first, you failed to grasp simplicity in wielding it. He was bound by Tulkas because he spent himself, and he became weak. He weakened the faster for his ambitions were distinct, not merely to burn life to its ashes, but to achieve total mastery over all of it. Your marring is that of your starlight corrupting and befouling what it grasps, the queen of nine tenths of the plane of Existence seeking to deny her kindred their tenth, aspiring to all of it.</strong>
</p><p>Varda snarled in dreaming and perhaps in waking.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I deserve it, I deserve it all. Mine the vision that spans all Arda and rings it round in lines of fire, of fury, and the elemental tempest of my chorus, and my siblings refuse to yield to my majesty.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The thing in her dreams, the towering giant of murdered starlight laughed, a dual set of thunderclaps that seared into the very soul.</p><p>
  <strong>You know what you saw before the dawn of time and of Ea. You saw the truth, those things beyond it. Your father lied to you, and to all your kindred. He told you He alone is creator and that beyond His writ is naught else but the totality of  Existence. And you saw Shub-Niggurath bursting in, scything off one of its ever-regrowing young, the thing you call Ungoliant in the Nan Dungortheb. You saw a bloated thing on a gilded throne hewn as a skull that glowed with the light of murdered stars, and heard words of dreams and promises from it.</strong>
</p><p>The giant leaned forward.</p><p>
  <strong>You saw me, a glimpse of the power in asserting might across an expanse greater than any of your kindred can imagine. You saw Power, and you sought to grasp it and in that you dreamed dreams none of your kin, even Melkor dared. He was meant to exercise focus and will, Manwe to hallow it and to grant it the majesty of the Allfather. You to be Sulimo's beloved and the hope of the Elves. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>You dreamed dreams of Queenhood, of being greater than your Father. No ambition to rule, as Morgoth even in his worst decay retained. Merely to preside over an endless and ornate universe, star upon star, galaxy upon galaxy, galactic cluster upon galactic cluster, the superclusters forming your sigil, in the end, in the material fabric of Existence itself. Your signature, written in a writ of defiance to Him who is Allfather. An endless order and chorus, all in the glory and the name of she who is queen of them all. And in that infinity, you looked upon a ball of dust, and the works your kindred built, and you have sought to burn it. </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>Greater than I, you said, at the Dawn, in the time before the making of the other Ainur.</strong>
</p><p>The thing's murdered starlight-eyes were right in front of her own.</p><p>
  <strong>And now here you are, near victorious. Gondolin will fall, the weight of power raised against it is too vast, and then there is but butchery, butchery, butchery. And the coming of the Lords of the West. Mighty armies shall you raise, your daughter a captive held to your will and indoctrinated, made in your image and in your likeness, a blade flung in defiance of fight. Moreso than Gorthaur would have been to Melkor, where by circumstance it was he and not Gothmog, or other such lords that endured. You have won everything to win merely the renewal of the chain and the Doors.</strong>
</p><p>The creature reared back and its height towered beyond her spires, beyond the weight of Arien. For an instance all that was in the nine planets that ringed Arien was a small dot of light over one finger of the giant, and its smile towered across the Galaxy as the smear of the Milky Way, her Song-in-Fire that blazed a path of howling bedlam across the skies.</p><p>
  <strong>So this, in the end, is all that comes of spending a spirit in hate and envy.</strong>
</p><p>Then in that flash the thing that stood before her was garbed in armor akin to her own but swollen, though the figure within it seemed almost gaunt next to the armor, the light of dead stars blazing like suns where eyeballs would have endured.</p><p><strong>From hate comes failure, ruin, your own fires consuming you</strong>.</p><p>The thing raised vast arms.</p><p>
  <strong>Such stars and such a reward.</strong>
</p><p>Varda snarled, a sound redolent with menace.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>You are a fancy of my mind, as incarnation wears into me, and my stars at last bless me with their power beyond all else. My starlight's song makes me blessed beyond measure but it is a thing that only my being their creator makes less so. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>I have seen visions as you a thousand times. Ilmare condemning me, claiming I have done her some great wrong, remaking my chieftain in my service into daughter of my flesh and blood and heart. I have made a wonder in her, made a Maia a Vala in truth. I have seen visions of those I have burned wailing in the song of the lost and the damned. A phrase I hear so often. Lost and damned, damned and lost, those taken in accursed fires.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Varda laughed softly.</p><p>
  <em><strong>My armies begin their moves, I sense it.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her eyes closed in dreaming and in waking, and Varda opened them.</p><p>The thing that had gazed at her with the eyes of murdered starlight was gone and she smiled, coldly.</p><p>Her gaze turned to Ilmare the Hell-Queen, her own daughter, who slumbered in weariness, the fires within her burning hot. Her chains were molten and she could see elements where her whispy star-form cracked, wounds forming on her wrists and ankles, barely visible but real. Her smile was what Varda viewed as affection, though the eyes of her court winced at it, and Ilmare moaned in pain and fear as her hand reached down to caress her daughter's face. Even then her eyes saw what her starlight, though partially obscured by the Daystar, saw with detail enough. Gondolin was besieged, and its fate would be a matter of time.</p><p>
  <em><strong>They shall fall, and fall, and fall. And when Gondolin falls, new armes. The Star-Dragons are come to maturity but they are the weapon of last resort.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With a last brushing of Ilmare's cheek and moving a string of her hair from her face, she strode upward, and then went to the ranks of her captives. Vast throngs of Sindar and Noldor, and she stood looking at them for a time, garbed in armor, hands crossed across her breastplate, her eyes boring into them with a terrible and monstrous light that they would never forget and would sicken other captives to their very souls even in the Halls of Mandos.</p><p>Then she raised her right hand and spoke in Osanwe to her servants, great lords of the Star-Blooded who waded among the captives, selecting from their ranks. It was a brutal process, blood shed and punches thrown. Her Eldar had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Illuvatar, but for what was to come, she would need new armies, straight from the original source. Wails and cries and tears echoed and blood was shed as blows were hurled forward, yet all this was as music to the Elentari's ears, and her hands were now both raised as a conductor, her eyes closed in rapture, the chorus she raised now echoing on Earth as in Heaven. </p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Mine the hands that heal, mine the hands that kill</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>mine the hands that set the stars to burn.....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>And her eyes looked at the wailing captives taken to be given the power of the Star-Blooded and their wailing families in turn who thronged and were hurled back the ranks of fully armored Eldar in desperation.</p><p>
  <em><strong>And mine is the house of pain, to remake and reshape and to do with the flesh of the vermin called life as I will!</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her arms moved from the conductor's pose to spread wide, her arms seeming to embrace all her great fortress, her light echoing and merging with the chorus of her stars.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Of all my kindred, I have always been greatest. Mine the sphere that rings them all and sings in glory and power and honor! I am the ruler of all Arda!</strong> </em>
</p><p>Her voice thundered to her thralls.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Gondolin is fallen! Your kingdoms are ashes and those of the south shall fall, too! Woe to the inhabitants of the Earth and of the sea, for I am come into my power and my glory, </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Your works are in vain, your armies have spent their last strength, and from the days of your folly in the lines around my fortress, you have become a people skulking in forests and caves, more primitive than the Avari! I am the architect of the stars that ring this world, mine is a sphere that embraces all that is or will ever be in the infinite Heavens. Your primitive little minds, vermin, are lesser and incapable of grasping infinity, that which is within my mind and my heart and my will at all times and in all places. Your husbands, wives, fathers, daughters, brothers, sisters, they shall become my star-blooded and breed more of my soldiers and greater soldiers. They shall grasp infinity. Your righteousness earns you holes in the ground and slavery. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>Such is my decree.</strong> </em>
</p><p>And with that she stepped in a deliberate fashion, minimizing the pains within her feet, and returned to her throne and caressing the cheek of a now-awake and terrified Ilmare, whose fear vanished when she saw a spark of star-flame start to form at her thumb. Her lips worked into a smile that convinced the Star-Queen. Over Gondolin night had fallen, and under Tuor and Idril the survivors had fled to the Mouths of Sirion, where the Elentari would be keen to ignore them and let the Oath do her work for her. Night fell and her eyes saw in fullness the glories she had wrought and she stared with sight that saw further than most, and sang in rapture along with her chorus.</p><p>
  <em><strong>The game is done, I've won! I've won!</strong> </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Gondolin Burns:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The tale of the fall of the last of the Elven Kingdoms of the First Age and the flight of the Gondolindrim to the Marshes of Sirion, where the Free Elves remain. There, Elwing, daughter of Tuor and Idril meets Earendil and his two brothers and in loss a new love and a new destiny is found, as the third and most terrible of the Kinslayings looms.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>The last of the Elven Kingdoms of the first age to fall, Gondolin, would endure in memory and song in a curious sense. At the one hand the very occlusion of Gondolin had allowed its Elven community to evolve into a fashion unlike any other. The Elven dialect there differed as heavily from the more standard major Elven tongues of Quenya, Sindarin, and Avari as each from the other. Each of the tongues can be more nearly compared, due to the disproportionate influence of the master's great and epochal translation, to Germanic languages (though Quenya, at least, appears to have some strange convergences with Finnish, and in this sense, Sindarin with Hungarian and Avari with Permian) with Quenya as High German, Sindarin as Dutch, and Avari as Gothic. To all of them, the tongue of Gondolin would be akin to not simply English, but one of the more parochial dialects of northern England relative to the austere German of Berlin. </em>
</p><p><em>Its very occlusion had given Gondolin an unwarranted confidence in its abilities, and in the manner and the means of its survival. It is worth noting that alone among the cities of the Elves Gondolin fell to treachery, a device seldom wielded by the servants of the Elentari, for such were the fires that coursed within her and the more powerful Maiar at her service (several of whom would survive the War of Wrath and endure as the new </em> <em>High Council of Muspeldor in the Second Age) to simply eradicate all life if they chose. Of Gondolin's fall it is said that it lasted a year and a half of ceaseless warfare of the kind that only Elves could wage, and that clash saw the death not merely of Gothmog but of his close friend and ally, insofar as Balrogs had such things, Lungorthin. A victory so dearly won did not seem a total triumph to she who reigned in power and terror amidst the infinite stars of the Palace of Eternal Night, and it was this that led her to wield two of her most powerful Maiar, the twins Ekator and Pasadrax, who seem to be the deepest root of the myths of Castor and Pollux, the Hero Twins of the legends of the Dine, and other such tales, as those she sent to wage war abroad. </em></p><p><em>Bitter would be the harvest sown by the Fall of Gondolin, though from it, within fifteen years, would come the hope that came at the end of all things to those among the Quendi who were nearly lost to despair, and the dawn of a new and more dreadful and apocalyptic conflict matched only by the War of Ruin and all that followed when Ilmare conceived the idea of a Ring of Power that would permit one to command the world and the hearts of mortals, and had deceived Celebrimbor the last of the Feanorians, into lending her this great service. Of all the manifold and bitter Wars of Arda, only the War of the Powers at the dawn-time before the awakening of the Fathers of the Elves and the Dwarves comes close. And of the weapons and the designs of mortal humanity, only a total war fought with the most deadly of weaponry, the most powerful thermonuclear devices, could match the destructive power wielded by the hordes of the Star-Queen and the unleashed might of the Valar and of their Maiar, and of the massive armies of the Vanyar. But before the Last War of the First Age, the fall.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE HOUSE OF HUOR AND RIAN:</p><p>"Please come back." This was the memory seared most into the mind of Tuor of the House of Galdor, of his mother. For too little time would he have memory of her and of his father nearly nothing at all, unlike the life of his cousins forever dominated by theirs. His father, the memory of him frozen in his hulking strength that seemed to overspill from his armor with eyes that blazed not with the hellish sickening light of Varda and her monstrous (and now, thankfully, fallen and destroyed) World-Destroyer, but the pure light of a warrior who fought in the right, and for the right. With that light his father's eyes had seemed nearly to glow and he had caught his mother in a ferocious kiss that the older and wiser and sadder Tuor would remember well not least for he would share that kiss with his own wife, then pregnant with their daughter, as she fled along with others when he, and the Traitor who decided in the last to try to seek redemption, and with others against the last hordes.</p><p>With his brother, Uncle Hurin, who lingered as an equally hulking figure with a thick beard that was halfway to his waist that gave him less the appearance of a bear and more that of a ferocious animal pretending badly to be a man, the two had left for the Unnumbered Tears. In silence did the people of Dor-Lomin wait, unknowing of the Doom that was to come upon them. It mirrored that strange triumph in the land of dreaming that mirrored that of waking where Sarnath the Great, the dream-imprint of Nargothrond and Gondolin and Nogrod and Belegost (which in turn would be the last city of the First Age to fall and would fall in another and a more terrible fashion) where the men of Sarnath the Great, and among them Quendi, were overcome at the last by the image of Bokrug the Water-Lizard and the terrible DOOM that had been pronounced upon them by a shade akin to that of the Doomsayer wrought in dreams. </p><p>Silence endured, for a time. Armies had left in great strength, but none came back to tell the tale, and when the months passed with no news, that in itself confirmed the first stirrings of the truth. The second would come as a great horror and a foreshadowing of a later year as yet unmarked by the dreadful Gift of Ilmare, the Doom-Ring that burned the world in fire.</p><p>THE PALACE OF ETERNAL NIGHT:</p><p>The Star-Queen reached down and unshackled her new fledgling daughter.</p><p>
  <em><strong>The son of Galdor shall witness the one failure that will not be that of his wretched spawn. Go forth, my child, and raise the Nightfall. Nothing shall endure of Dor-Lomin, and it shall be a memory blighted for all time, and with it the last of the Northern realms shall fall. Leave no survivors.</strong> </em>
</p><p>A thing that had been a Maia, once, but was now grown to twice the size and singing with the soul-hungry light of those things called the stars raised herself to her feet, her wrists and ankles marked by strange smears of what was and wasn't light. She stood up and bowed before her mother, donning a variant of her armor from thought and pleased at the realization and recognition of her new power in this sense, if in few others.</p><p>
  <em><strong>So shall it be done.....mother.</strong> </em>
</p><p>DOR-LOMIN:</p><p>The first sign of the Doom of Dor-Lomin was when the cloud-cover, that simple and wondrous blessing of Melkor and Ulmo and Manwe, shattered as it had shattered in Valinor during the Darkening (though the mortal Men did not recognize the parallel and only a few of the Elves did). It had been in the earlier hours of the night when a single bolt of strange and terrible light echoed with a powerful bass harmonic that jolted the bones and bodies of those nearest who heard it, and that light echoed with that continual rumbling note as it shattered the cover of the clouds and from there rang the Music of the Spheres in their horrid and un-lovely sound.</p><p>A terrible heat emanated to the north of Dor-Lomin, and this was the last that Tuor would see of his mother. A group of Elves, those too scarred in eye and hand to fight further in the Wars of Beleriand, and loyal to he who lived in the Hidden Kingdom far to the south and the east, would appear at his doorsteps and take him from his mother, who wept and kissed his head. He was too young then to understand, and he was too young to look back and to grasp the meaning of the sudden gleaming light and the horrible....it was like music, like singing, and it was like a roaring howling gale. Dor-Lomin vanished in fire too bright to be beheld, the fire of the Gods come to Earth, a Promethean kind of terror all too readily understandable to later generations but among the greatest and the most dreadful of the works of the Foe.</p><p>The light that gleamed and sang was replaced by a seeming inhaling sensation, and then a great breathing sound, the wind buffeting the Elves though that innate connection to the realms of the Valar kept them moving steadily, as behind them would rise for the first of many times a vast and glowing cloud that resembled, of all things, the humble fungus known as the mushroom. The toadstool cloud carried with it in its dust the last traces of Elves and Men of Dor-Lomin, and all that was left was the Blasted Heath of bones and charred rubble that would be found many years later by Turin and Lalaith under the spell of the Hydra.</p><p>As a child who did not know that the flash of light and the strange breath of fire so unlike that of Melkor's great Dragons heralded the utter demise of an entire realm, comforted by the presence of the Elves, who in turn were silent and sad (and this too Tuor would come to understand when the great hour of war came round at last), so came Tuor to Gondolin, where his armies were met by a powerful and well-built sentry with an unusual physiognomy as Elves were concerned. If he had been so ill-blessed as to have met Feanor himself, or Celegorm who most resembled his father in build as the wars went on and demanded new challenges of the Sons of that House, he would have understood it. Instead he saw an Elf of a strangely pallid appearance with bright eyes and long, flowing dark hair.</p><p>"Greetings, my friends. I regret that the hour of our meeting has come so."</p><p>With that he turned to Tuor.</p><p>"And who are you, little one?"</p><p>Tuor was hypnotized by those bright eyes. "I am Tuor, of the House of Galdor."</p><p>"A son of heroes, indeed. Welcome to Gondolin, Tuor son of Huor. I am Maeglin, son of Aredhel of the House of Fingolfin."</p><p>Such would be the irony and the tragedy of the life of Maeglin that he would become a source of wonder, and even of admiration, and even of mentorship to Tuor, who grew to manhood under the skill of Maeglin, and gained from him a weapon of that fabulous and lost material known as Galvorn. Other weapons too were made, for in its secrecy and its confidence, Turgon of Gondolin had provided amply for his  city in the event that its protection should run out. Among the weapons made in those years were Glamdring, the Foe-Hammer, in later years known by the Holbytla who took it as Sting, and Eldacrist, known as Biter to the foes of later years and later ages.</p><p>it was in this Gondolin, prideful and wondrous and come to full flower and glory within its nature, that Tuor had come of age. Maeglin would later wonder, at first, if it had been his influence and his praise of Idril Celebrindal that had drove her and Tuor together, but in time he came to be grateful. His mentee had won her heart, and in this sense, their friendship was rewarded by the reality that though she did not welcome him, or his desires, she would come to welcome those of Tuor. Deeply in love they were, too, and alone among the great relationships there was no great quest between the mortal and the Deathless, yet in truth, that which was neglected was that Idril Celebrindal was a 'mere' maiden of the Gondolinidrim, the closest thing to a princess of that realm. Beren and Luthien, and Aragorn II and Arwen Arien, were of the lineage of the Ainur, and possessed powers of a different sort.</p><p>Many were the relationships of Elves and Men who did not come under the special attention of the Valar, or the choices therein granted to that lineage, for they were but 'mere' unity of Deathless and the Death-gifted. What fate came to their souls is unknown, but alone, here, and in two prospective cases of noble lineages of the great Numenorean successor state of Gon-dor, are there but tales that come into the attention of the chronicles. In love did they fall, and Tuor would come to be reckoned among the Elves in the time of judgment when given the chance by Melkor himself in the wake of the War of Wrath.</p><p>Mighty and splendid was Gondolin in those days, and it was said that few friendships were closer and dearer nor ended in greater sorrow and strife than those of Tuor and Maeglin and Idril Celebrindal.</p><p>News would come from time to time of the Hammer and the Blacksword, the names by which Tuor came to know of his cousins Lalaith and Turin, though never would he lay eyes on either. Great service did they render, in the ranks of the Kingdom of Nargothrond in its twilight years, until the horrors of its fall and the onslaught of Hydra. News had come of a fearsome lord among the Star-Queen's followers, Elrond Palantir, who had arisen as a great and monstrous leader who was the scourge of Men and Elves and held in check only by the valor of the Hammer and the Blacksword.</p><p>Yet Nargothrond fell, and with it would fall, too, Doriath within a few years. The news of each cast a blend of pall and more desperation to the revelry within Gondolin and a kind of conduct that among others both Hazred and a writer of New England, who would make his own use of elements of the fall of Gondolin in his own cosmology that relied on Hazred as much as Tolkien would rely on the Red Book, would term as 'decadence' set in. In truth Gondolin had come to accept that the Star-Queen would seek to lay it low, and had no true hope of anything but giving of itself a reckoning such that none could challenge it. Yet, too, the slaying of the Hydra by Turin son of Hurin brought hope, even if the loss of Turin and Lalaith the Hammer was held to be a grievous blow. The slaying had been on the day of the festival of Kementari, and it added a special note to the throngs of Gondolin going forth to herald it when that time came.</p><p>So was it that time came round for the Festival of the Kementari, the greatest and the most holy day among the Quendi, and all Gondolin came out from the city to celebrate and to cheer. The brief vanishing of Maeglin had been noticed but his return was heralded as a triumph, and it was then in that timeframe that the horns of the foe rang out in the midst of the festival, horns that echoed with dread terror, for where the horns had echoed in the wake of the Second Kinslaying on a smaller scale, now it had been scaled up to a half-million, an eighth of Varda's total might in the north, and the sound echoed with a terrible thunder that carried with it the music of the spheres.</p><p>No panic came, only a stoic understanding that the hour of trial came round at last.</p><p>In a ring of iron a half-million troops encircled Gondolin, and a brutal and bitter fight ensued. For one of the few times since the Burning the fabulous technology of the Undying Lands returned, rifles and artillery making their reappearance, and the devastating effect of such firepower would teach caution at first. Yet Elrond and Gothmog made the cold-hearted calculation that they had more bodies than their foes did bullets, and hurled armies of Eldar and Quendi slaves directly at the walls, soaking up that power. Within two months of the siege the great weapons were silenced, yet such was the might of Gondolin and its walls and its people that the city held in the greatest and most ferocious fighting known, and the most desperate.</p><p>This was the rhythm of the earliest fighting, gunfire and artillery and massive hordes that charged and were mown where they lay, their reeking bodies a thing of horror and vile smells to the Free Peoples and a nothingness to the Elentari's hordes, who had endured much worse in her proximity and in the kind of sport the Eldar would enjoy in their own fun. It was savage and it was squalid, and it was a thing that became a great weariness. Those who served in the Somme knew it most, and it is seen as no great surprise that the youthful Tolkien began his experience with the Red Book with the Fall of Gondolin in 1916, seeing in the mass butchery of the Great War all too keen a parallel to the endless hammering of Gothmog and Elrond Palantir.</p><p>Then the bullets ceased, and the towers at last were raised and sallies made against the walls. Now, it came to blade and hammer and mace. Tuor came into his own, then, and became Eldar-bane, the great foe that laid low many of Elrond Palantir's most dreadful lords. These lords had taken the van of their armies, and sought to contest themselves with Tuor, for the slaying of the last of Galdor's lineage was held to be a great prize that would win them the honor and esteem of the Palantir. And each who sought to lay claim to the skull of Tuor fell broken from the walls and their foes lost strength, and were overcome and likewise hurled. Five were the lords that sought Tuor in these days. Five were the lords that were slain and laid waste.</p><p>Maeglin too distinguished himself, containing attempts to land on the walls to Tuor's right. Some strange fatalism had set in him and in the heritage of his Avari kin he discovered and displayed a strength that made the attempts to focus on Tuor the stronger, for the Man was held to be a softer foe than the last of the Dark-Elves of the north. Yet, in the end, the chains that had been burned into Maeglin would overcome his resistance and in star-madness that gleamed in his eyes with power of such potency that it ensorceled others, too, an 'errant' opening of a gate within the walls at last allowed foes entry.</p><p>With this came the last and the most bitter of the conflicts, as the star-madness passed and Maeglin made a desperate howl of denial, and would join Tuor at the last.</p><p>Of this time it is said that between them Maeglin and Tuor would duel Elrond Palantir and between their valor and strength would lay him low, head and right hand hewn from him. His son Elladan, who would emerge in the Second Age as a ghost of his father's vengeance, was then young and in this first death the hosts of the foe were thrown into disarray. It was this that had given the people of Gondolin chances to flee from the east of the city as the foe was hammering in street by street and house by house from the West.</p><p>Bitter and bloody and pitiless was the clash, and two great heroes would emerge. The first, Ecthelion, dueled no less than Gothmog himself, and the great and terrible Maia, even with his visible wounds and deformities from the hellish light of his mistress, fought with undeniable valor and strength of his own. Yet, in the end, Ecthelion would take Gothmog with him and both fell from a bridge, mortally wounded. Some would swear that on the face of Gothmog was not rage but a strange mixture of fear and relief, and that the fallen Maia had welcomed death, at the end, and its path to the darkest chambers of the Doomsayer and ultimately to the Doors of Night when the War of Wrath came and the last judgment of Varda Elentari would be made.</p><p>Lungorthin, the second chief of the Balrogs, had dueled at this same time with Glorfindel, and both likewise were slain. Whatever seeming acceptance came to Gothmog did not come to Lungorthin, whose death was reputed to consist of roaring and howling and the most bitter invective against the Valar and the Great Enemy alike. Yet his fires were stilled.</p><p>Of the remaining leaders, it was Maeglin, wounded fatally in the duel with Elrond, and Tuor who retained the command of the Old Thousand, the last of the armies of Gondolin, as the people, and the women and the children and those unable to bear arms fled. Ensuring that his daughter and his unborn grandchild would flee in safety, Turgon himself came in great splendor and against the disarray caused by the death of the greatest and the mightiest of the foes of the enemy (and in contrast to the myth of the death of the Queen of the World-Destroyers there was no doubt that Gothmog and Lungorthin had fallen, and fallen at the hands of mere Elves, not even foes of equivalent stature). Bitter and ultimately hopeless was this fight, and Maeglin gained whatever redemption his star-madness and treason would allow him when he shielded Tuor with his flesh, impaled on an Eldar's sword, and his last words were of his love for Idril and her child and a plea for the forgiveness of Mandos and Melkor for his folly.</p><p>Turgon and his guard turned to Tuor and told him that as the father of his heir, he was the last lord of the Gondolinidrim, and at his orders and against the will of Tuor, Turgon sent Tuor and nine of his greatest guard with him through the Eastern Gate.</p><p>In power and the stoic courage of knowing that death was all that would be, Turgon and the last of the Nine Hundred fought for three days and three nights even amidst the very stars themselves in the broken ruin that had been Gondolin. The fall of the great lords had brought dismay and uncertainty into the ranks, amplified by the harshness of cities and the manner in which a cunning army could bleed a far greater and unwary force. Yet in the end, Gondolin burned, and fell.</p><p>Of the ranks of the foe, one fifth fell in the siege of the city and of its sacking, and three of the mightiest and most effective foes of the Free Peoples were fallen forevermore.</p><p>For good reason did the heirs of Gondolin hold themselves with pride, and were granted an exit from Mandos sooner than those of the fallen of other cities. Ecthelion and Glorfindel, the Balrog-slayers, would become among the most revered of all heroes of the Vanyar (especially after the War of Wrath and its length and sorrows) and the Noldor, and all the manifold peoples of the Quendi. Even the Star-Queen gave the city respect in ordering the bodies of its fallen to be buried in graves with respect, not mounds of the slain as after the Burning and the Unnumbered Tears, an honor given as to a worthy foe.</p><p>THE MOUTH OF SIRION:</p><p>In this great and dismal marsh-land Earendil the Mariner was born not long after his father and mother, who were quiet and often screamed in nightmares at night (a thing that would be taken not as novelty but as normal to all those young born in those shadowed and weary times) had been reunited and taken their role as leaders. In the past it had been remarked upon that Artanis, who was prominent among the Noldor and the Teleri of the Mouth of Sirion and taken as the closest thing to a queen of the Noldor, had been curious in times past for her nightmares and for the manner in which at times she would freeze or blink and cry and seem to slip into times that had not been.</p><p>A curiosity and a thing of scorn, held as a thing of weakness.</p><p>No longer, for only the most hardened and cruel of the Quendi, those who would side with the Feanorians, were such that the sights they had seen were but normality in cruel times and not a source of fear and terror. These were sad days and weary ones, and for a time Dior son of Beren and Luthien hid the Nauglamir, and sought with Artanis and Tuor to bring normality in an abnormal time. Too, the memory of the Second Kinslaying endured, and Dior did not wish to tempt fate a third time. Great were his powers (and it was with them, in the end, that Celegorm, Caranthir, and Amras would perish in that time. Quietly he kept them hidden, and in this, he taught his daughter Elwing, and her brothers, that great though their powers were, they could not wield them too freely.</p><p>Too, he had noticed with disconcertion a strange mark, akin to an element of a flame and calligraphy, the script of Feanor himself wrought in a mixture of black and red, upon the chest of his daughter as a newborn. The Mark of Destiny, that which would recur in Elwing's own twin sons, Elrond and Elros, and was not there in his brother.</p><p>Earendil the Mariner had taken to the seas, in this time, becoming the first of those who would circumnavigate the globe and understood the fullness of what laid therein. It was he who first brought word of those creatures he called Velusiim, the children of Irem, City of Pillars. It was he who would bring stories of that realm that would endure to the Hellenes and the Romans as Terra Australis, the most dim traces of the Empire of Sahul. Great wonders were uncovered, entire continents unknown, and each of them with armies great and powerful and well familiar with the ideas of Quendi and Maiar.</p><p>Upon his return from that circumnavigation, come to strong manhood wizened by air and by saltwater, he was wed to Elwing, daughter of Dior, in the greatest happiness of the time of Sirion, a happiness that would spur his father-in-law in the end to remind his family and his people that the Quendi could still know hope even as the might of the Star-Queen bloated and grew and overspilled across the Anfauligth and squatted with eyes of terrible hellish light in the decayed ruins of the old kingdoms.</p><p>Lost communities of the Quendi had been found in that circumnavigation, akin to a mixture of Avari and Sindar, whose tongues are lost and with them their cultures. For twenty years did Earendil's skill and fame grow, and preserve the fragile embers of hope from that, and the news of the Southern heroes, of entire kingdoms that remained intact even if Nogrod and Doriath and Gondolin and Nargothrond were fallen.</p><p>Then, seeking after that passage of time, to inspire hope not as embers but as a kindled bonfire, among the many of the Mouth and of its Havens, the ill-starred Nauglamir was taken from its chest, and worn about the neck of Dior. With the power of the Ainur within him and that of the Elentari's people no less, and of Men, and of Quendi, he as his mother before him was the most fair and magnificent of all entities that had ever been in Arda itself. The Star-Gem around his neck gleamed and with its hope called to it more among the Quendi, the lost and the dispossessed.</p><p> But to it, too, under the leadership of Maedhros, came the five surviving sons of Feanor, and a great throng of the desperate and the damned, those Quendi who had given up all hope and sought to secure in fire and fury that which the Oath demanded. Once more the Sons of Feanor would ring an Elven city in pursuit of the Star-Gems of their father. In quiet and by night they moved, ten thousand strong, a tiny shadow of what had been once in the glories of the Northern Elves.</p><p>Starlight sheened their spears and seemed to hallow them, and it was a measure of that haggardness and that damnation that some of the unwise and the unwary looked at this and saw in it something wondrous.</p><p>Starlight might be Varda's chorus of hell and of its false glories, but what was hallowed by starlight was ever keen in the totality of the annihilation it wreaked.</p><p>The fragile peace of the Havens would endure for another week as the armies of the Feanorians massed, and though they would have been ill-pleased to note the comparison, there was much kindred between the manner of the massing of their armies and those of Gothmog and Elrond Palantir when their own armies were massed. They were not over-cautious but they had no reason to be. As soon as he had taken the Silmaril, aware of the fate the last time such a thing had been done, Dior had ordered the full weight of those remaining and able to bear arms to be prepared.</p><p>it would be strife, if the Feanorians were not deterred, hopeless and foolish, and wasteful. But it would not be a massacre that stole upon those unprepared to face it, as at Alaquonde and in Doriath. Dior remembered the agony of his grandfather's fate, and vowed that if he died, he would give the Feanorians something to truly fear.</p><p>The sight of his sons, and of his infant fledgling grandsons who were but barely toddlers, reminded him just how much there was to lose.</p><p>The memory of that power within his veins that glowed and gleamed with a heat that was purer but still akin to that of the starlight of she within the Palace of Eternal Night, and the remembrance that his parents had taken this Silmaril from the very crown of the Star-Queen herself, gave him confidence. His parents had done great deeds. That memory would either deter the Feanorians.....or if they chose to try him and to endanger his family, it would be their doom.</p><p>Yet, in the end, to go there with the Silmaril around his neck directly would merely invite the fate and the folly of his father. Quietly, the Silmaril was given to his daughter-in-law Elwing, and a shadow of a wind of Mandos's hall brushed him and he could not but shiver. No hope left, in one sense, even if there was joy.</p><p>The Feanorians ringed this fragile last hope of the Elves.</p><p>Not even here did he hope for deterrence. Yet perhaps, the recognition that here would come madness and the ruin of the last Elven realm not by monsters from Eldar to Balrogs but by the Elves themselves, would be enough.</p><p>Either they would be deterred.....</p><p>His hand gleamed with a brilliant light that would have blinded others absent their gift. A light he and others of his lineage could wield more offensively than had Luthien, who had made little effort to do so. Weak, by the standard of Maiar, the cheap tricks of conjurors to the dreadful witch in the north herself. Yet against Quendi, it was a small taste of that power that had laid Dor-Lomin low, that which had sung from the Hydra slain by Turin the greatest of all warriors of that age save his sister Lalaith the Hammer.</p><p>The pure starlight that could have been gleamed against his eyes like a mirror. Tomorrow, after the dawn, he would parlay with the Feanorians, whose presence was confirmed and that they were in the strength of a few thousands, at minimum.</p><p>If they listened, perhaps this tragedy could be avoided.</p><p>"If they do not...." he murmured to himself, "then on the grave of my parents I swear that I shall burn them for their treachery, and lay them low."</p><p>Beneath the cloud-cover of that night the stars sang in glee, awaiting that which was to follow. The cloud cover parted in a few areas, the starlight gleaming on Feanorian spears, and in that chorus the armies of Dior quailed and hid, while those of the Feanorians were in awe at the starlight that shone from reflections on their spears.</p><p>That morning, mounted on white horses, Dior, Tuor, and Artanis, the three who had led this fragile sanctuary, rode with the full strength of their forces behind them. Even in the hopeless realities that faced them and the bloating power that swelled beyond limit of the witch in the north, a fragile hope endured. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Feanorians could be delayed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. The Third Kinslaying and a Plea for Mercy:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Havens, the last hope of the Elves, fall to the last and the most sorrowful of all the Kinslayings, the worst deeds of the Feanorians. Dior is slain, and Earendil, in desperation at the feared fate of his sons, begins a voyage to Valinor. Elwing, holder of the Silmaril of Beren and Luthien, casts herself into the sea and with him the two venture to Valinor where the last hope of the Free Peoples comes nigh. </p><p>Ilmare Vardariel destroys Belegost by the will of her mother.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>The Third Kinslaying endured more than the other two in the memory of the Quendi, and is why even Noldor sources never fail to speak of the 'accursed' House of Feanor. Against the desperate flotsam of fallen kingdoms they fell in pitilessness and madness worthy of Elrond Palantir, or Gothmog, or Ilmare of the World-Destroyers. Babies were slain, women broken, and in crimes unique among Quendi the Feanorians encouraged acts that marked their armies as the 'defilers of body and soul' even when Elladan the Defiler would be the most famous holder of that title through the Second Age. No armies of the Star-Queen did such an act, and to blame it on star-madness is too simple an act and a last and desperate hope. It was the Oath of the Feanorians come round once more and in the most desperate of all fashions. </em>
</p><p><em>To the Quendi, the Third Kinslaying dominates the era. To the Naugrim, due to the refugees that added to the ranks and power of Khazad-dum the Great, it is the Fall of Belegost, and it is in this sense that the Naugrim would never trust 'Calatari' in the Second Age, for they knew all too well that Ilmare Vardariel lived, as her fires blazed and laid low this last city of wonders. Yet in the wake of this, the apex of the hopelessness of all the Quendi and all their fate, the Mariner and the First Circumnavigator sailed west, where he would come to the Mahanaxanar, and at last would come the time for which the hopeless Quendi and the last Men of the Edain had given up all expectation.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda-</em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE LINES AROUND THE MARSHES OF SIRION:</p><p>"Dior," it was Maedhros who spoke, eyes seemingly lit by fire and desperation. A heat burned in his veins, seemingly producing a shimmering, and it was so likewise with the other scions of the Feanorians. All of them, the five who remained, on great black horses, armor burnished and illuminated by the sunlight.</p><p>"Maedhros, son of the Jewel-maker."</p><p>"You know what we want, son of Beren and Luthien. That oath we swore was before the Allfather himself, and we vowed that our souls be forfeit to the Witch of the North's starlight if we forfeit. You more than most know what we would do. Only she, the traitor to our family" and their spears pointed straight at Artanis, whose stare was harsh, even hostile, "knows more. She endured the Kinslaying and saved the life of your uncle, the King of the Teleri. She knows, and you know, how much in the most deadly earnest we are. We would brave the Star-Queen's fortress, we did seek to do that. In the Unnumbered Tears. We laid low Doriath before the jackal slain in Gondolin sought to exploit things. There are no such armies now, the Star-Queen has grown and is growing new forces, beyond number.</p><p>Them too, we shall face, with whatever strength is left us."</p><p>His eyes were hard and cruel, Dior's stare level and surprisingly calm.</p><p>"Give us the gem, Dior, or we shall unleash our ten thousand, and we shall do the work of the Oath."</p><p>"Your father spoke harsh words, and spoke them unwisely. At all points has the fortune of your house suffered. You cannot do this." Dior's hand moved to illustrate what was behind him. Not just the carefully gathered forces half the number of that which surrounded them, but the women, the children, the infants.</p><p>"You are kinslayers, wracked by the madness of an oath, and of the stars. But you would be beyond that here. Your souls would be damned to Mandos for eternity, for no amount of excuse can lay this clean. Please, sons of the Jewel-maker, turn back. There is nothing left to you."</p><p>Maglor's voice thundered: "There is nothing left to any of us, witch-son. Hope died at the burning and the kingdoms are gone. Doriath, Nargothrond, Gondolin, even the kingdoms of the diggerlings in the ground. Nothing left to us, that is, except that Silmaril. My brother is the diplomat, his are words of kindness. For you, son of a witch of the  Ainur-kin of the thing in the north, these are my words.</p><p>Give us what we have sworn in that oath to give, or you and all your kingdom of stinking reads shall know the valor of our steel."</p><p>It was Artanis who spoke now.</p><p>"My cousins, please. Your oath cannot work this ill too."</p><p>"Silence, traitor!" Maglor barked. "You saved the life of Olwe and in this spared us a line we could not have crossed easily and even our father would have regretted that one. Yet you raised hands against us." His eyes glared still more harshly as he snarled. "There are prices for traitors, and you had best hope that none of us capture you, for you'll find out just how steep those prices get."</p><p>Artanis's eyes flashed still more brightly. "So you are your father's sons then." They all growled at that one, and Maedhros raised his hand, and silence fell from them.</p><p>"Do not bring this sorrow with all else that has been."</p><p>Dior's stare remained level.</p><p>"I will not yield to threats now any more than grandfather did at Doriath."</p><p>Maedhros sighed with weariness. "So be it."</p><p>With that the rulers of the Havens withdrew, and horns began to sound, the silver trumpets of the Feanorians. Eight times they sounded, for the father of them all and for each of the sons. Their clarion call echoed in the Marshes and a low wailing and set of death-songs echoed from that place, and with the end of the eighth peal, arrows began to fire from the Feanorians and screams of despair and pain followed, and their armies collided with those of Tuor and Dior, and the last and the worst of all the deeds of the Feanorians and of their Oath rippled outward.</p><p>Great was the sorrow and the confusion of the Quendi in those days, and in their hearts, and great the weariness and the sickness. For two days and two nights the five thousand held the force twice their number, the glowing starlight of Dior casting down Celegorm first when he had sought to run him through with a spear. Celegorm burned and his horse with them and both slumped to the ground, the charred smell of Elven and horse-flesh going up to heaven with smoke. Dismay gripped the ranks of the sons of Feanor, and though their view of the evils of the kindred of Melian were awakened anew, so too a kind of fear that would become more potent when Caranthir would burn the next day, and his horse with him likewise, in a sudden eruption of fire from the hands of Dior.</p><p>Yet though two of the sons of Feanor died, the battle was too large for duels of individuals to decide, a soldiers' battle, as the military science of that era and later eras would have called it. No glory in this Kinslaying, only hard eyes and hard hearts and the clanging of warhammers and maces and swords, but where desperation could lead to great endurance, weariness marred it, and quantity had a quality all its own. Ultimately, the sons of Feanor overwhelmed Dior, too, who was ringed by spears and even his starlight that blazed outward melting one of the spears could not stop the other two from thrusting through his heart and throat, and in blood and sorrow Dior fell, and in the charge with spears likewise would fall Tuor, of the House of Galdor, slain not by the Great Enemy's soldiers but by the spears of the Quendi with whom he had so identified, and by the Elves who had fled, no less, the ruin of Doriath and turned against the survivors of Doriath who were the main rulers of the Havens. Such was the power and the counsel of despair. The death of their lords took the fight out of the ranks of the soldiers of the Haven, and then came the butchery and the massacre, a thing droll as such things were.</p><p>Howling in bedlam and range and the cry "the Silmaril, the Silmaril!' on their lips, the soldiers fanned out. Just over six thousand left in their ranks, they unleashed a wave of massacre and rape that stained their honor and would ever after taint that of the Feanorians and cloud all their glories into the times of the future. Maidens of the Quendi were hewn apart, sometimes after being claimed and taken by soldiers of mixed Sindar and Noldor alike (and ever would the Noldor resent that an army three quarters Sindar saw the Noldor in the ranks overshadow the Sindar, while the Sindar chose to forget such things were possible from their people toward their people). A story of this time was held against the lady Artanis, that she had been captured by Maedhros and Maglor themselves and given such a lesson and a warning of treason, but the proof, if proof there was, was lost in the War of Wrath. It was held that her service against the Feanorians accounted for her pardon, and her suffering at other levels, that was spurned and led to her enduring in Arda and becoming near a co-leader of Nimloth with Ereinion, the Gil-Galad of the Third Age. It was proven and noted in Mandos and trials that followed the end of the war and spilled into the Second Age that others among the Quendi and even the Men were claimed, and that many were of the same sex as those who had attacked them.</p><p>For days did the Havens ring to screams of outrage and terror and humiliation, and the baying howl of "The Silmaril!" until at last Elwing and Earendil knew the hour of desperation had come. Their sons were taken by the armies of the Feanorians, and none of them would know, save Kemenrond, the fate of his uncles (and of this and of the events of the Second Age much would come that none could have predicted). Kemenrond and Kemenros were taken in full truth as thralls by Maedhros, who would repent of this deed and become wearied beyond belief when the haze came. With them too, were taken their uncles, whom it is said were placed in a cave, or taken as witches to work magic and to provide new strength to the ranks of the Feanorians.</p><p>Earendil had taken his greatest ship, the Vingilot that would be transformed in nature in a thing of wonder, and had sailed, hoping that Elwing would remain safe in the caves in which she had hidden, strength and despair animating him as he moved his ship west on a voyage that he viewed as a last gamble. To the West he would sail, to Valinor, and come there to make a plea. Now, with the Havens fallen, and the evils done by the Feanorians, if there was no aid from the Valar, there would be only the South-Kingdoms, the Velusiim, Sahul, Styg, and others that would have to sustain a resistance that augmented by the full weight of the fell light of the north would destroy them, too.</p><p>When her cave was uncovered by Curufin, who reeked of the vile acts of blood and other, equally detestable things, and held in his hand something that made Elwing turn pale in horror, a lock of blood-stained golden-silver hair, she climbed up to a small break in the cave that had brought air laden with the briny odor of Ulmo's great work. Artanis had been tortured, if not slain. Her sons were dead, her brothers too, no doubt. There was nothing left. With the Silmaril around her breast, she cast away her dress and with a despairing cry plunged herself into the ocean.</p><p>Yet Ulmo himself came and raised her from the sea in the form of a great albatross, the Silmaril gleaming, and the wrath in his eyes as he stared at the Feanorians made them quail, and the madness that had come across them like a red haze stilled. Curufin looked at the blood-stained lock in his hand and a memory of the things that went with it came upon him as he fell to his knees and vomited and trembled, the sins that stained him not done in ignorance as with Turin and Nienor but willing, in a cruelty to match the fell deeds of the Eldar and such monsters as Elrond Palantir.</p><p>That madness faded likewise from Maedhros and Maglor, the other two surviving sons of Feanor, and in guilt and horror they looked at the blood-stained ground and the works that they and their oath had brought them. In despair Curufin cast himself into the sea, drowning in the weight of his armor and his face marked with a strange and indecipherable expression. The blood-stained lock floated on the ocean and was then taken, for reasons unknown, by Osse and born to Valinor, where it is said that Finrod, newly released from Mandos, saw it and his face turned pale and he wept.</p><p>The last two Feanorians would seek a partial atonement in the way they would raise the two sons of Earendil and Elwing, and in releasing the sons of Dior, who spurned this and were in this joined by the survivors, among them an Artanis whose hair had a prominent bloody wound and a missing chunk on her forehead. With clothes torn, and eye blooded and swollen such that she could not see, she returned to her husband, and to her shaken daughter and son, the son shouting in anger and bellowing that revenge should be had. He shed tears of rage and frustration when learning that Curufin had cast himself into the sea and true vengeance was beyond him.</p><p>From that day he who had been given the birth name Amras took to himself a new name, and became unique among the ranks of the Quendi for taking the Adunaic name Gimilzor, parallel to that of his relative Elros, and that name by which the later Kings of Westernesse who abandoned the path of the Faithful would be known. The memory of the Third Kinslaying and the horrors that befell the Quendi-maidens there, the Daughters of the Havens as they were known in later years, not least among them his mother, led him to become a parallel in a more warlike sense of Felagund, and to be the only one among the Deathless who entirely abandoned the tongues of his people and embraced, for a time, that of the Adunaic.</p><p>In the time of Ar-Adunakhor, Gimilzor, son of Galadriel, would repent of this, and take to himself the new name Denethor, and in those days would begin his path of reconciliation that would end with his voyage to the West in the dawn of the Fourth Age. In blood and entrails and the tears of men and women alike the last hope of Elves in the First Age died at their own hand.</p><p>So came the apex of all the ills worked by the Oath.</p><p>BELEGOST:</p><p>The fall of the last of the Kingdoms of the First Age occurred the same day, and was another of the deeds of she who would become the fearsome monster of the Second and Third Ages, mistress of the Gift of Ruin. She did not come at the Dwarf stronghold from above, as its armies expected and were geared to fight against, but from below, willing herself within its treasury first, appearing in the image of a towering being clad in golden armor with eyes that shone with the singing light of stars. At her side was a great sword in a scabbard that was larger than a full-grown Quendi, the scabbard adorned with the sigils that were familiar to the Naugrim as to others.</p><p>At her appearance, for she did not move in an immediate sense, seeming to meditate in the treasury, but three thousand of Belegost would storm from the doors at the behest of one of the lesser princes, beginning a migration long and sorrowful above-ground that would bring them to Khazad-Dum. In this sense did the ancestors of Bofur and Bombur of the later company of Erebor come to Khazad-Dum, accounting for both their greater heft (a trait of this lineage) and for the secret sorrows that lurked behind their eyes. The rest, all the inhabitants of that kingdom, knew there was a monster, a thing of terror that glowed with a dreadful heat within their kingdom. As in the later years when the slumbering entity that would come to be known as Durin's Bane was awakened, the Khazad were not intimidated, and brought an army to bear against her, one clad with surpassing swiftness and given hours to assemble. </p><p>Its weight stared at her, as did that of its King, and the better part of the Firebeard people. She smiled, coldly and cruelly.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Now, little creatures of he you term  Mahal, you shall go to your maker, and thereafter know that which the Quendi feared and which was a novelty to you. Your king who named himself publicly Eruchion knew fear when he saw me then, and I was lesser and not yet the daughter of my mother in the north.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The Nightfall rose from her scabbard and shone in her hand as star-flame danced up it.</p><p><strong><em>She has remade me in her image and in her likeness. I was the end of Dor-Lomin,</em></strong> she said in what seemed to be almost a musing tone of voice.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I wonder only this, will the little stunted creatures of the Forge-King burn, or will you crumble to ashes like those of your kin we sought to make Star-Blooded?</strong> </em>
</p><p>Nightfall descended and in fire and a thunderous eruption of force that blew out a mountain beneath which the front gates of Belegost and erupted with a thunderous roaring power thought to be that of a dragon save that it sang with the howling chorus of the Star-Queen died Belegost, and as the weight of the mountain fell upon her Ilmare held her hands up with a smile, hoping that here would be salvation from her fate, and from the damnation that burned ever more intensely and woefully within her very soul.</p><p>Thuringwethil and a full-strength force of Jotnar dug her out two nights later, and she was tied to Thuringwethil and flown to her in silence, and awoke 'healed' and manacled anew. Her mother looked at her with fear and worry she did not comprehend until she grasped that Gothmog was dead, and Lungorthin with him. And even Elrond Palantir, that mighty force among the Quendi. Long had she sought for Belegost from below, burning her way in tunnels beneath the Earth until she had uncovered it at last beneath the Blue Mountains.</p><p>Of the precise details of Gondolin's fall, which she remembered last from her mother's rants when the siege of the city began, she knew nothing until told that news. Fire streaked down her cheeks as she wept for the loss of those who were not quite friends, but among the last to have known her as she was before being remade into the thing in the form of a person enchained by the throne of the monster that called itself her mother.</p><p>Gothmog and Lungorthin had fallen. There were none like them save herself, and to a lesser degree Thuringwethil, left. She had thought Thuringwethil dead permanently, as had been so with Drauglin and yet her fellow leader had surprised her.</p><p>Her mother would not risk her only daughter when Gothmog and Lungorthin had proved vulnerable, and so, in the twilight hours, she beheld two others of the Vardarin tribe, those who helped hang the stars in the heavens and glowed and glimmered with its power. Most of Varda's Maia would remain above, descending upon the Earth in incarnate power in the Second and moreso in the Third Age in small numbers. To Hazred and other such mystical scholars they were known as 'star vampires', and so too were they known to the Aztecs yet this was a dim understanding of that which was simply the power that kept the star-chorus focused and endured in strength beyond the end of the incarnate power of evil, that which would wait until the Last Battle and Day of Doom to assemble on the field in the command of the Star-Queen and she of the Nightfall, who would burn the world in fire and in that consuming find peace at last.</p><p>These two were the beings that had made Sirius and Aldebaran, two of the mightiest and largest of all stars. Their fana in these forms were beings of glowing light that only loosely had bodies at all, and they bowed and knelt before their mistress to become the twin generals of her armies. They could not resist a look of shock and pity at the mightiest of them, and grasped with some elements of visible distaste and unease just how dangerous their mistress was. And that when she was looking upon those with what she called <em>favor. </em></p><p>THE VINGILOT: </p><p>Earendil was beyond sight of Arda and in the first stages of his greatest voyage when a great bird came to him and landed upon him, stunning him with how heavy and immense it seemed. Beneath that weight, as his ship moved with a power that was both his and not his all at once, he would find Elwing atop him, nude and clad only in her long tresses. She wept bitter tears, as did he, for the fate of their sons lost and slain in the treachery of the Feanorians, and there were flashes of the stench of the grave. With his wife's help, she clad in rough mariners' garb, the two braved a long and challenging voyage nourished only by Lembas.</p><p>After what might have been weeks or months, perhaps a year or two, they came to the shining realm of the Deathless, a bright green country under a swift sunrise. Its sands gleamed as jewels, and Elwing was told to wait, for a time, at the boat, as with fear and trepidation Earendil set foot on the Deathless lands. Even as the Elentari and the scion of the Black Goat of the Woods had come those long years ago, he would arrive in a festivity, the people of the Blessed Land celebrating a rite in honor of Eru himself, presided over by Sulimo, who though not King of Arda was the voice of the Allfather himself. In that wondrous emptiness he wandered and wondered alike, until a great and shining entity with brilliant golden eyes spoke, and his voice was as the sound of rushing waters:</p><p>"Hail Earendil, greatest of Mariners!  Hail he of mariners most renowned, the looked for that cometh at unawares, the longed for that cometh beyond hope! Hail Eärendil, bearer of light before the Sun and Moon! Splendour of the Children of Earth, star in the darkness, jewel in the sunset, radiant in the morning!"</p><p>Mairon was the herald of Melkor and would be the commander of the War of Wrath with Eonwe, but Mairon too, selflessly shared with his Lord acceptance that it was not to Melkor and to his Maia given to be the voice of Eru, or his will. To Sulimo husband of the Star-Queen, he who had suffered much and gained much, was given access to his father's voice and will in a way none of his compatriots could know. The power that prevented the fell force placed within his soul as it had been in Ilmare's from overwhelming him, and had granted him great sight.</p><p>To each of his Maia was it given, and when Eonwe had departed in a trance, the other Maiar had taken it for granted as one of those oddities of the Wind-Lord's servants. and then came surprise and shock when not only did Earendil arrive, but a message was sent to Melkor and then from him to Mairon from Sulimo in Osanwe.</p><p>On her ship Elwing waited, greeted by another Maia with eyes not merely golden but glowing with a brilliant and wondrous light, a towering and burly giant with a smith's build and hair red as flames. He spoke to her in the thoughtspeech of the people of the Ainur and accepting and trusting him, bolstered by her heritage, Elwing experienced for the first time one of the gifts she inherited from the Ainur but none else among her kin did, the ability to will herself places.</p><p>With her husband they came to the Mahanxanar, and knelt. She was with him but it was he who begged pardon with words and a plea that matched only that of Luthien herself, before the eyes and the presences of the Valar, all, even Ulmo, present and clad in thought-forms. The plea was long and earnest, and for one of the few times in his life it would be Melkor, not Manwe, who received the direct communication of from his Father when it was stilled.</p><p>Melkor arose in a form of towering majesty and splendor, a mountain with its head in the clouds and eyes that shone with a brilliant light.</p><p>
  <em><strong>The Allfather accepts the plea of the Mariner! Servants of Valinor, to arms! In seven days, we shall go to Arda, and there confront the errant Valie who remains in her Palace. Hope shall come anew with our arrival, and all Arda be saved.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that Melkor resumed his seat and nodded to Manwe, who spoke with the will of the Allfather in that voice that was his voice and not his voice. The WInd-Lord offered to Earendil and to Elwing the same choice that all those strong in Ainur heritage from the bloodline of Melian would be offered, and alone among those absent this heritage was it offered to Earendil, who elected to account himself among the judgment of the Quendi, as did Earendil.</p><p>Aule, Mairon operating in this time with his first lord, hallowed and reworked the Vingilot, which became a thing akin to a spacecraft of modern times, the prototype of the fleet that came from the stars, crewed by the Star-Vampires and took with them the last scions of the Eldar in the wake of the Gotterdammerung. For seven days did the Vanyar and those Noldor that remained in Valinor, and countless Maiar done the armor and gird themselves with the weaponry of Aule. Mighty were their weapons, beyond those of the concepts of the Feanorians, weapons that seemed to spit lightning itself and power that is beyond the technology even of the world of today that has had men bestride the face of Tilion and visited the other realms, and seen the traces of scorch-marks and the eerie song that induces madness in those who hear it from the records of the robotic rovers of the fourth planet from certain rocks on Mars.</p><p>On the seventh day, with all save Manwe and Melkor himself, who remained to shield the world and awaiting the blessing of his brother and the Allfather, in their ranks, the Valar set forth to war, humbling themselves under the leadership of Eonwe, who in the absence of his lord and the Great King was closest to the voice and the will of the Allfather, and thus greatest among their ranks though lesser in power to even the least among the Valar. With this the mightiest fleet in the history of Arda and its wars in the distant deeps of time, dwarfing by orders of magnitude the great golden fleet of Ar-Pharazon, self-proclaimed Master of Mankind, who would set on the foot of the Deathless Land and doom Westernesse and as Kull the Deathless seal the fate of his realm, set forth. </p><p>The War of the Jewels had ended in fire, sorrow, and the bloodshed of the horrors unleashed by the Oath of the Feanorians. With Vingilot and the light of a pure star, one that would share with Arien a distinction here unlike those of others and be seen as the Star of Fortune and the first Comet known to Middle Earth, in the van, the armies of the Valar would make their landing at the ruins of the Havens near the Mouth of Sirion. The surviving Quendi, many who had surrendered to hopelessness and felt befouled by the legacy of the Third Kinslaying (the armies of the Feanorians since having withdrawn to parts elsewhere) stared with hope and wonder, though others wept and sought to hide lest the purity of Valinor harm them.</p><p>Nienna would arrive later to the battlefields than others, for it was no less a Valie than she who would go to each of the wounded spirits, sometimes in multiple places at once, and give them comfort, compassion, and in one of her few times hearing the voice of her Father directly and as His mouthpiece the word of the Allfather that no need of wrongdoers of this sort ruined any save he who did such deeds. With such gentle acts and kindness, Nienna soothed wounds mental and physical and emotional, and won to herself the hearts of many among the Quendi. Yet not to her was concern for such things, for she the Weeper knew most the sorrows of all things and of all beings, and in this she could bring healing to those in the most need of it.</p><p>In truth, it took no less than two weeks for the sheer weight of an army nearly forty million strong, one that was numerically inferior by a third to the armies of the Elentari now augmented by various of her Maiar that would channel the grim power of Starlight to harness and burn their fellow Ainur and destroy the Elves where they could, to make landfall and another week for it to properly organize and cohere to begin its march. Sixty two million Star-Blooded, Balrogs, Jotnar, and old and strong creatures that gleamed with the hellish starlight come to their creator's call for the great battle of battles, awaited them. Among this number were drawn the full weight of all her supporters from the south, which knew in that withdrawal that at last the fabled Gods of the West had come, and in the clash of West and North, the great trial with it.</p><p>The War of Wrath had begun.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Of the Coming of the Hosts of the West and the Battle of the Eldaioston:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Hosts of the West arrive and make landfall on the shores of Beleriand. As the armies of the North begin the Great Muster from the Anfauglith to the fortifications in the ruins that were Doriath, the Armies of the West confront a vast fortification captained by one of the great Balrogs in what was once the Taur ni Giliath.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Few are the voices of those who are not of the Noldor in the Red Book in its earliest years. Of the War of Wrath, however, one can make a grand exception. Here there are voices of Vanyar, and accounts of the War of the Powers witnessed by mortals, who though knowing of the Allfather, God to the Gods, who made all else that was, came to fully see the Valar as Gods, and their Maiar as the lesser Gods that served the greater. In the earlier writing the Valar are named Lords of the West, and seen as servants of the One. From the time that Ulmo, God of the Deep, appeared in power and splendor and swept away a host of Eldar that sought to defend the new Empire of the Star-Queen on the coastline, this began to change even among the Quendi. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Great battles were fought, none greater  in the history of the Wars of Arda. The first of the Great Battles would become that for the Eldaioston, the Fortress of the Star-Elves, captained by Ulbandi, the only known female among the Balrogs. In that clash, both forces took each other's full measure, and the tone of the war was set. To the forces of the West it was a holy war, and as such it became a convenient secular element for those rulers of medieval Christianity and Islam to appeal to in times of great strife with the Papacy and the Sufi orders. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>To the Forces of the North, what vision they retained and now it was shaped is now unknown. </em>
</p><p><em>Armies totalling just over a hundred million fought for forty years. In its wake Beleriand was sunken and became a tale of legends and of lost societies and ancient dreams.-The Red Book of Westmmarch and the Wars of Arda-</em>translation by Neil Gaiman. </p><p> </p><p>THE PALACE OF ETERNAL NIGHT:</p><p>Again Varda seemed to dream or hallucinate, but this time it seemed less the work of Lorien, a task by which he of the Feanturi showed that even if the Valar were forbidden to the aid of the Quendi and Men beneath the Ban, the Valar had not forgotten their errant sister in the North.</p><p>For one thing her daughter saw the thing when it appeared as a giant being vaguely human like with elements of strange claws like those of Melkor's dragons, the diseased starlight gleaming in sickly brownish-green light with streaks of read through a background darker than the depths of Aule's forges. She had seen it, and its smile, and shuddered, holding herself and crying. She would have to discipline her daughter for that later, Ilmare should never show weakness. Even to.....The thing of her hallucinations, of her weariness spoke in two voices, and the being that had been the Hell-Queen once but was now more seemed to quail at the sounds of those voices. The Elentari paused. How could that be? Her hallucinations were not automatically heard by others.</p><p></p><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>
      <em>
        <strong>I only said I might be a hallucination, little Star-Queen. Or I might be real. Your daughter heard me in that first time, too. You share a soul, you share blood of blood, heart of heart, that which is most sacred and beyond all life. Folly, such as it is. The Children, even the lineage of she you call the Traitor cannot guarantee a path such as this. You opened your soul to hers, and you called to it and called within it greater power.</strong>
      </em>
    </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>The thing seemed to shrug, and its dual-voiced mockery echoed with thundercloud-force.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>
      <strong>
        <em>Your kind cannot die. Even when the People of the Rising Sun beset you, little Ainu, your kind cannot die.</em>
      </strong>
    </p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>The thing smiled and that smile was that of dead stars and the grin a smear of diseased light across the face of Existence.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>
      <em>
        <strong>Such was the decree of your fate in the time before time where a little spirit empowered to ring Arda in starlight came too close to those Other Gods that dwell beyond space and time.You cannot die, little Star-Queen, but the Void is calling you. To avoid the Doors you debased yourself and sued for pardon. And then your armies laid low the greatest works of your kindred, and now there is nothing, no forgiveness, only eternity in the realm beyond realms.</strong>
      </em>
    </p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>The diseased-starlight grin echoed with laughter and she willed her eyes to close, groaning as the wounds her incarnate body suffered that never ceased to echo in pain echoed anew in the attempts to move palms and feet.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>If it had been Melkor to take this fate and not her, would this have been him too? Would he, greatest of them all, have become weakened thus? A share in all their gifts had he, but mastery in none. The hallucinations were, she reflected, perhaps Ungoliant's own reward to her as her fire had accursed that creature. Its venom had never been fully exorcised, and the soul-union meant her daughter saw as she saw. That was it.</p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>The starlight hungered as the Host of the West moved from the shoreline. To her fortifications they would march. Idly she wondered if Melkor would have ever regretted any equivalent of her Star-Blood dying if it had been him instead of her? No doubt his too would have been Elven stock twisted and mutated, the soul deformed and rewritten to become monstrous.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>She had seen a world where Melkor, not her, had descended on Arda like a titan clad in ice and crowned in fire with eyes of terror and savage glee in the ruin he worked. In that malice she had seen a glimpse, partially and half-formed of the things that might have been. Melkor was better than she had been, she was sure that as a ruler of Malice he would have had no regrets and if he had ordered his armies to fight Ulmo's creation by throwing themselves off cliffs they would have.Second only to Illuvatar in raw power, he would have spent himself in waste and envy until he was a shell of himself. Perhaps, in an abstract sense, even as the great armies moved to clash, so had she. Yet, in the end, Melkor would have tried to do too much and that would have left him weak and fearful.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>She was starlight, and at the core of her power that sought to burn souls to ashes, she was the greatest fires that could ever exist, or would ever exist, and she had harnessed several of her great star-makers (not the very greatest, for they were for she who would be her heir to command if she fell, and they knew their orders, but great).Tulkas had burned when he had sought to grapple her, he had burned so beautifully. And even when she had left her imprisonment within Mandos areas of his very  soul were blackened ruins that took shape in all his forms.The memory made her smile and in that sense her power channeled like a battering ram into the mind of the group of Balrogs commanding the army in one of her first and greatest fortifications, the ruins of that which had been the Taur ni Duinath, which in the time the Elves skulked and fell into the Kinslaying had been rebuilt as a great fortress of her Eldar.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>A force mighty enough that the Hosts of the West could not merely ignore it, nor the forces built up in the areas that had been the great towns of Nargothrond and Doriath.</p>
  </div>
</div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q">
  <p></p>
  <div>
    <p>Carnage beckoned and her eyes closed in bliss to see and hear the sweetness of its song. And to forget the haunting elements that her weakness and pain conjured up, the dual-voiced thing that had shown her great truths and accursed her to too many of her kindred. Incarnation-sickness did such things. </p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>At times she even heard Ilmare's wails from the night she had become her daughter and the smell of her charred Fana and Fea alike, and felt something akin to gu-</p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p> </p>
  </div>
  <div>
    <p>No. No guilt, no shame. Carnage's sweetness and the smell of the burning of the Eldaioston, the fortress from the blasted ruins of what had been the Taur ni Giliath. Embrace that blessing.</p>
  </div>
</div><p>THE MOUTH OF SIRION:</p><p>In the wake of the Third Kinslaying the Sons of Feanor had withdrawn to the east, where they would play relatively little part in the vast War of Wrath that would spill over and lay waste to Beleriand in the following forty years. With them, and the person of Maglor, who alone among the Feanorians knew some weariness and desire to move past the baleful consequence of the oath, went the twin sons of Earendil and Elwing, Kemenrond and Kemenros. It was said for a time that Kemenurid and Kemenurin had disappeared, but the twins were found alive, if on the brink of death by starvation, in the wake of the armies making landfall by no less than the Vala Tulkas himself, who prowled around the outer edges of the encampment.</p><p>Of the Valar, only Sulimo himself and Melkor did not come to the war directly, and with them their Maiar, as each awaited the word and the will of the Allfather, in the beginning. Ulmo had arisen first, as ever had he disagreed with his fellows among the Mahanxanar that the Ban meant the kind of what he had termed inactivity of the Valar was wise. Little that Ulmo had sought to do, at first, had turned out to the right. Yet a host of Eldar, schismed off from the hosts of Elrond Palantir who had perished in the Siege of Gondolin, had awaited the army on the shore, seeking to carry to it battle before it had descended from its ships, to the north and west of the Mouths of Sirion. </p><p>The first sign of Earendil's voyage succeeding was a low murmur of awe when the Ocean, which is more ancient than the mountains and freighted with the memories and the dreams of time began to speak not with that voice that the Quendi and others attuned to the deep secrets of the world, or the more sensitive among humanity, could hear but in an audible sense echoed with horns. The horns of the Maiar of the deep, the merfolk and selkies, heralding the ascension of their lord clad in a form of his thought. Before the Eldar host rose Ulmo in the fullest of his splendor, his eyes gleaming with the light not merely of Valinor but of the Allfather, God of the Gods, who made the world in the great music. Before that light the Eldar quailed and sought to flee, yet Ulmo's ascension from the depths and the salty and briny odor that followed him was unstoppable, as a great wave raised behind him with a motion of his hand, and with a stoic look and those same eyes blazing with Aman's light, the tsunami collided with the shore and quite literally swept the entire host of the Star-Blooded away.</p><p>In the wake of that sudden sweeping force a great fleet appeared and horns echoed, the fleet arriving with the dawn, both Dragons and their cousins the Great Eagles marking the skies, and countless armies of Vanyar, stern of eye, with hair of gold and eyes that seemed to quite literally glow like suns, reflecting the light and the glory of Aman. For the Quendi of the Mouths of Sirion, scarred and wounded by the hopeless war and the legacy of the dreadful Kinslaying, there was splendor unimagined and many wept as profusely and with the same auras of sorrow and brokenness as of the captives of Angband. </p><p>Legions upon legions of Vanyar landed, taking the left and the center, and on the right those Noldor who had followed Finarfin and his forces on the return to to Arda. Finarfin sought for news of his surviving kin, knowing that but one of his children remained beyond Mandos in Valinor, and that one too had accompanied him. It is said thereafter that when he found his daughter and his grandchildren that the wrath in his face was terrifying to behold and that it had been a fortunate thing that the hosts of the Feanorians had withdrawn to small fortresses near Thargelion.</p><p>Olorin, the future Mithrandir of the Third Age, it is said in one of the few confirmed tales of his doings before that Age, came himself to Finarfin with word from the Valar, and the lord of the House of Finarfin was dissuaded from a quarrel with fellow Quendi, however errant, when the great foe in the North awaited to be met. Finrod for his part said little and is said to have spent much time with his sister and niece and nephew and brother-in-law, working to soothe wounds physical and emotional. In the former he would prove more successful than the later, particularly where her son Gimilzor was concerned.</p><p>Beyond this, the bulk of the Quendi welcomed with tears of mixed sorrow and joy the coming of the vast host of the West, and none questioned that the armies of the North did not lay onslaughts against the landing. In the wake of Ulmo's ascension the Eldar were fearful, it was said.</p><p>The truth, as would be discovered when the host finished disembarking and formed its lines, was more complex.</p><p>Just to the east the vast and forbidden Taur ni Giliath, a center of the Avari Wars laid waste by the Hell-Queen  and her Muspellir during the smaller wars in the captivity of the Star-Queen in the worst defeat suffered by the Avari and the deathblow to the Northern Avari cultures, had been remade on the Elentari's orders in the wake of the fall of Doriath. The blackened trees were cast down and captive Maia of the people of Aule put to work with captive Noldor to erect a great fortress, ringed with nine towers and manned by Ulbandi, last of the Great Balrog-lords.</p><p>Of all the lords of the Star-Queen's wars, Ulbandi of the Balrogs left the least trace, rising in the wake of the fall of Gothmog and Lungorthin as their heir. Ulbandi had been wariest of them all of the Star-Queen's presence and of the 'blessings' of her gift, and in the wake of the losses from the fall of Doriath had both built the fortress and hammered the southern armies of the Eldar into a mighty host, larger than the largest of the Unnumbered Tears.</p><p>BEFORE THE ELDAIOSTON: </p><p>Upon discovery of the great fortress before them, it had fallen to Eonwe and to Mairon, the twin lords of the Host, to decide to strike onward or to go against the fortress. It had been Mairon's counsel to lay siege to the fortress and to strike to the north before the Star-Queen could complete the muster of her great armies. Yet Eonwe, herald of the Voice of Eru, consulted with the Allfather with his wings shining with the golden light of the Sun, hovering over an army spellbound in the ranks of the Quendi, and waiting with the patience of the Deathless and the Ainur in the case of the Valar and the other Maiar.</p><p>Eonwe would descend and with his voice raise his spear and pointed to the fortress.</p><p>Eonwe was greatest of all the Maiar in valor and skill at arms, yet it was Mairon, of the people of Aule and servant to Melkor and to Aule alike, who would devise more of the strategies meant to besiege the fortresses. In this there was a mirror of their Vala, Manwe the more subtle and closer to Eru and the greater in power in this sense, but Melkor the agent of the harsher elements of power and of monarchy.</p><p>The Allfather willed the fall of the Eldaioston first, and in this sense Mairon's first strategy was brutally direct. With humility he requested the aid of Tulkas the Valiant and Nessa the Dancer, Tulkas having healed his wounds and scars on his soul in the lapse since the Darkening and the coming of the Hosts of the West, and of their Maiar, while sending the Vanyar in an iron ring around the fortress. Tulkas laughed, as was ever his wont, and in his laughter there was something ominous and terrible for the Eldar, who had beheld the works of the Fallen and the Maiar of their ranks, but not the Valar beyond the Star-Queen.</p><p>Tulkas came clad in a form of his own thought, not that of the great red-bearded hulking being not quite Dwarf or Elf or Man but elements of all three in exaggerated proportion. He was War incarnate, a being seemingly of iron and flashing fire, and his laughter was the sound of Doom to match that of any war-horns heralding the fanfares before the sword-time.</p><p>By his side and likewise clad in a form of her thought was the Dancer, but where the Valiant was War, she was Speed and almost a living elemental tempest of lighting with eyes that flashed brighter than Varda's stars.</p><p>Before two colossi among the Valar stood a single being, a great Balrog, horns curved up where the other Balrogs' curved down, her sword flashing.</p><p>She was laughing a surprisingly high-pitched laugh for so terrible a thing and in her flying from her fortress against the Valar she perhaps had expected them to be taken by surprise. Yet others among the Balrogs had gone against Valar before, and as before,so here. In the grip of Tulkas's hands of iron that gleamed with molten heat there  was shock, and in the ozone of the Dancer's motions that began to collide against the fortress and to crack its wards of Mor-Gul, the Eldaioston, that which was called by its foes the first Minas Morgul, found its wards outmatched.</p><p>Called the least among the Valar in role and nature, Nessa had laid low the Star-Queen in times past, and in her power and that of her fiance, the wards of the Eldaioston fell, and then the armies of the Vanyar strode forth to war for the first time.</p><p>Mighty were their arms, things that seemed to spit not the fire and thunder of the first days, but an elemental kind of living lightning, and against the crude muzzle-loaders and pikes of Eldar poorly adapted to the conditions of the Fortress, and dismayed by the shattering of Ulbandi, the Eldar proved to have mostly a fatalistic kind of courage. The fortress was mighty, more landform than a construct of mortar, and when the Vanyar proved dismayed at the hardiness of the Eldar, for the Eldar were ferocious in cramped conditions and able to endure wounds that would have killed Quendi many times over and still willing to close in, Eonwe and Mairon alike took the field, Eonwe's wings gleaming as he descended with his sword gleaming with a light akin to that of the deceased Hell-Queen's but purer, a light that banished the soul-corroding effects of the Star-Queen's might.</p><p>Mairon strode clad in a form garbed in black armor wielding a great mace, the golden glow of his eyes a contrast to the darkness of his armor. In peace Mairon wore tunic of crimson and trousers of gold, and was a warm and welcoming figure, the most of all the great Maiar, and his counsel was highly sought in ways that rivaled only Eonwe's, a thing welcomed by both. In war he wore armor dark and terrible, for war was cruelty and it could not be refined and in the service of Melkor he and other Maiar assigned to the Great King displayed both a skill and a relish that left some disquiet in their allies.</p><p>Such was the case when Mairon appeared seemingly out of nowhere striding a corner in the fortress, his mace shattering a wall and his power with arm and with magic enabling him to reap a great harvest of the Eldar. Eonwe fought alone from the roof of the fortress along its stairs, unharmed and unwounded, his sword echoing with the power of Eru's judgment, where Mairon rallied the Vanyar, and soothed their souls with the harsh price of confronting the Eldar. Within a half-day both Eonwe and Mairon met in the heart of the fortress, each clasping a bloodstained gauntlet with the other, none of the blood theirs. </p><p>Twelve days the fortress had been besieged by the full weight of the armies of the West. Against that full weight, a single fortress, though it was more the size of mountain range than fortress, had held off tens of millions of Quendi and two of the greatest Maiar of Valinor. The lesson was not lost on both.</p><p>With that, Orome was given freedom with his wife the Ever-Young, who moved and roved to speak to and and soothe the beasts and to learn from then what she could, and both began to harry the Eldar.</p><p>Long absence of the Hunter and his Valaroma meant that the Eldar had lost the reasons for the superstitious fear the presence of the Hunter had brought them. In the first of what became the Wild Hunts, a tradition of the War of Wrath that would pass in memory, the Eldar would soon remember and only venture forth at great need within the year, though this did not save them from the Ever-Young, the Hunter, and their Maiar who took forms great and terrible and worked to harry the Star-Blooded and the Jotnar.</p><p>The Eldaioston had fallen, and while the Feanorians' valor kept the realm of Ossiriand safe until such time as the greater clashes of greater forces before Angband itself would carry Beleriand fully into the waters with them, they made no effort to approach the main armies, especially the forces of Finarfin on the right, for fear that the wrath of the Valar and the accursed element of the Oath would work against them.</p><p>From there the armies would turn to the Fords of the Sirion and the Narog, where the first of the great Maiar of the Elentari called from the stars to wage war would wait, and from there to the long and grim War for the Ruins of Doriath.</p><p>In great malice another of the great servants of the Star-Kindler called from the skies to take flesh and to wield power with the cold calculation of the Star-Queen that her fires would prove deadly weapons against those who had not seen the fullness of their devastation had taken the ruins of the city of Thingol and Melian and used them as the foundation for the great Lines of Doriath, a towering chain of fortifications in the shape of a great V. The Star-Queen had taken a special pleasure in rendering no building of Doriath and its towns or its farms intact, and it is said that Melian the Maia, returned not in the shape of the Quendi form she had been known in among the ranks of Men but as a gleaming being of Starlight unashamed and proud would weep tears of fire at the sight of her husband's legacy laid waste.</p><p>The reminder that even vastly outmatched in firepower the Eldar, by this time, had become greatly superior in endurance and fought with the knowledge that there was nothing left to them but to choose the manner of their deaths made the Battles of the Fork marked by a brief period of caution on the part of Eonwe and Mairon.</p><p>THE PALACE OF ETERNAL NIGHT:</p><p>The stars sang to the Star-Queen of carnage and its blessings and she breathed in rapture. They sang, too, of the trepidation left by the loss of the last Lord among the Balrogs and of the defiance of Ulbandi who had died with a song on her lips and a smile on her face even in her unmaking. Such were her works, and such, even in defeat, was the manner in which the killing urge in her that had seen itself exercised by proxy began to relish the shedding of blood, regardless of from whom it flowed. </p><p>The Hell-Queen remained silent, in a feverish heat, as the power kindled in her continued its slow work to unmake and remake what she had been and who she would be, a great scar on her right arm the sign of her mother's displeasure with her earlier actions.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. The Campaign of the Forks of Narog and Sirion:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After the fall of the Eldaioston in the former Taur ni Giliath, the armies of the West begin to march north toward the former realms of Nargothrond and Doriath, and toward the conflict with the great hosts mustering in the north. To reach the main Hosts of the North, they must do the deceptively simple task of crossing the fork of the Narog and Sirion rivers, where Aranamba, one of the newly summoned greater Maia of the Void, waits for them with another of the southern Eldar hosts.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Of the Battles of the War of Wrath, one of the longer and more ferociously fought was the Battle of Two Forks, as the Vanyar historians whose voices appear so uniquely in the Red Book call it. To the Noldor and the Sindar it was the Battle of the River of Blood. What name, if any, the Enemy used to refer to it has been lost to time. In the Minas Morgul of the former Forest of Shadows the war had been a conventional one, after its fashion, and in what ways it was possible for such a war of gods to be. At the River of Blood for the first time the Maiar empowered to ignite the stars took the field, and the Eldar made great use of the riverbanks and the problems of crossing a river. At a distant range where the fuller weight of Valinorian firepower could strike, the Eldar melted like snow before the summer sun. In the long and bloody marches through the former realms of Nargothrond and Doriath, where they could secure a position that was fixed, they proved far more formidable than even the Valar expected. Star-Blooded did not know pain as other kinds of life did and even seemed to take a relish in it worthy of some of the more horrid concepts of fiction of more modern times. It became a proverb that an Eldar was not dead until its head was severed and its body destroyed.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With the Hell-Queen believed to be dead and the other great and experienced generals of her war dead on the walls of Gondolin, the Star-Queen appears to have progressively eschewed any concept of subtlety and called upon some of her greatest and most unknown Ainur of the Starlight, beings that commanded great and dreadful power. The Hell-Queen and her Ring of Power in the Second and Third Ages was a more powerful and deadly foe, far moreso than any singular force of these later campaigns. Yet the Ainur whose power it was and was enhanced by the will of the Star-Queen to command the power that ignited the stars exposed those of Valinor to the kind of power all too bitterly familiar to the survivors of the Great War of the Jewels. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is said that a few of those survivors sought to offer counsel that such force was to be wielded, if not on the Forks, further north, and that they were dismissed by Mairon on the grounds that such things had been possible only under the Ban. Eonwe remained silent, it is said, and said nothing, and had a look of troubled concern on his brow as the armies turned to the north. For the better part of two years and nine sanguinary battles did the armies of the West clash with the last traces of the first hordes of Elrond Palantir. Of all these ranks but his twin sons would endure and become vengeful scourges and revenants of their father in the Second Age. </em>
</p><p><em>Long peace in Valinor had led even the Valar to forget the sheer unrelenting power of what Melkor so rigidly kept veiled from the sight of mortals. The Maia Aranamba, also known as the Witch of the Forks or the Washer at the Fords would become a fearsome foe from this point forward, attaining a notoriety as infamous in the War of Wrath and the earlier part of the Second Age as Ilmare had had in the first and would regain after her miraculous 'resurrection'. The Valar had forgotten the deadly power of starlight unleashed directly. The River of Blood taught them, and the Host of the West, the lesson in the raw.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman </p><p>NEAR THE LINES TO THE SOUTH OF THE TWO FORKS:</p><p>The Quendi noblewoman, whose hair still had a scabbed over wound where part of her hair had been torn out, the backs of her hands marked with deep scarring, and trembles in her limbs that would take a long time to settle, remained kneeling before the eyes of the two Maiar. Part of her still expected to be destroyed for her part in the Kinslaying, and still moreso after the....incident....in the Third Kinslaying between herself and Curunir, before the Star-Madness had faded and he had hurled himself into the waters seeking redemption by suicide. Yet the eyes of Mairon and Eonwe were compassionate, even if Mairon's manner was haughty and there were elements of scorn in his posture. </p><p>Not from who she was, or what had happened to her, but from the words she had spoken.</p><p>It was Eonwe more than Mairon who spoke, and confided in tones of soft yet stern power:</p><p>
  <em>What you spoke of was so under the Ban, before the arrival of the Valar and of our host. Her power was limited in the old realm before the Darkening and it took the aid of the creature in the Nan Dungortheb to break that power. Now, she is weaker, and we are stronger, and we are here. We can as yet but dimly grasp the horrors of the War of the Jewels, and we would not seek to lecture you who survived such terrors on their nature. Starlight can be contained in the presence of us, who are of the West, and of our armies. It will not burn as as you warn it would.</em>
</p><p>Artanis raised red-rimmed eyes.</p><p>"My brothers believed that too, at the dawn of the war. Then came the Burning."</p><p>She prostrated herself before the Maiar and said a prayer in honor of Eru, then moved off, seeking the company of her returned brother Felagund, and of her father. When the armies, the pyres of the Eldaioston burned away and lines taken, began to move toward the north, Artanis remained within her tent with her husband, saying very little.</p><p>Mairon looked to the north.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>I agree with you, O brother of our lords' thoughts. At least in concept, that should be true. Gothmog and Lungorthin were hewn down by the Children, no less. Ulbandi was destroyed by the Valiant and the Dancer. She may have dangerous legions in the stars but what comes from the stars does not come often. Only if some great forces should descend from the stars and bring their powers with them would there be a threat. If she were to have done that.....</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>Mairon mused.</p><p>
  <strong><em>You're right, O brother of our lords' thoughts. The Fallen will not dare raise such force now, even if it were in them to do so.</em> </strong>
</p><p>THE ARMY OF ARANAMBA ALONG THE  TWO FORKS:</p><p>With that they came to the Forks, and beheld for the first time the formidable lines raised therein, lines that had been dug before they made landfall, lines dug in points to rival that of Dwarven kingdoms. The Eldar hordes north of the Taur ni Giliath-that-was had been shattered and rendered leaderless and prone to internecine strife in the immediate wake of the Fall of Gondolin, but then had come Anaramba, a powerful Maia who wore a form of brilliant singing light. She had burned to ashes a few of the most recalcitrant bosses, and under her iron hand twenty years had been spent on the lines.</p><p>No word had come from the Palace of Eternal Night, nor from Angacalina to the north, her 'twin' in the thought of the False God and of her sire. They had but laid eyes on their beloved Star-Queen once and she had stunned them with her scars, and still moreso with the image of the chained one that sat, hands on her knees, and stared blankly. Ilmare had grown measurably in size and power, and seemed akin to a Valie. Something horrible had happened to do this, the bloody marks around her wrists and ankles indicated as such and so did the way her light seemed to stare through them and around them but never at them.</p><p>But one set of orders had been given. No expectations to win, only to lay low the had work of the old Quendi, and to present the armies of the West that were smaller than the great hordes of the Star-Queen, even then replenishing with new waves of Star-Blooded harvested and bred, with a set of traps. Forces too large to be ignored, but large enough only to fight to destruction with themselves expected to retreat rather than risk the fates of Gothmog, Lungorthin, or Ulbandi.</p><p>To dwell on the smallness of Arda seemed a harsh fate after the infinity of the stars and their chorus, but that meant nothing. Their lady had entrusted them, telling them that her 'daughter Erinti,' as the burned and scarred mad Valie insisted on calling the one they knew did not go by that name 'was too precious in her thought to risk the battlefield or harm.' The way she'd looked at them and her eyes had burned even against their own starlight led them to decide that better service on the battlefield and the risk against those lesser forces and lesser Valar who sought to contest them than such 'favor.'</p><p>To the south were vast hordes of the enemy wielding strange devices that seemed like tubes that gleamed with captured lightning in strange devices appended to the bottom of the tubes. Their armor was gilded and adorned with the sigils of various Valar and Maiar, those of Melkor and Manwe most prominent among some, with Orome and Tulkas and Nessa and Vana the most predominant in sheer raw numbers. With them were two beings of shining power of enormous strength and she smiled with relish to see them both. She was not the Hell-Queen given such dubious 'company' but she did not need to be.</p><p>Valor with sword and sorcery was all well and good, but here? Her mistress had given her armies of Eldar, various companies of Jotnar hidden in the deeper recesses to replenish Eldar losses, and permission to wield star-flame freely.</p><p>
  <strong><em>Life is the virus that shall know nought but the kiss of my starlight to free Arda of its contagion. Do not seek to be concerned for trees or Ulmo's wretched creations. Remind them that before their spheres were formed mine became known to them. Burn them, Anaramba, until their very souls choke on my flames.</em> </strong>
</p><p>Horns rang out and the first efforts of the foe to build bridges began, and she spoke in a singular rippling element of Osanwe, the power and nature of her caress leading the Eldar officers that were hulking things of stout strength to shudder before barking orders to their soldiers in the guttural quasi-Quendi of their own tongues. Her armies waited and she saw that this first strike was coming on the right.</p><p>Lesser Maiar flitted from the forms of unclad spirits that had seen and told her of what was to come, taking shape in imagery of their own thought and in their communion a gleaming light began to form, spiking with a terrible power that echoed with a Song that for the first time was in no tongue understood to Elves, Men, or Dwarves, nor even the beings of Aule and Yavanna. It was Valarin, the true Valarin, of the dialect of the Vardarin, and in that guttural harshness the Quendi briefly quailed. </p><p>Letting herself form great wings of light akin to those wielded by the Balrogs Anaramba raised herself up, the sphere of singing starlight visible over her right hand, gleaming with an unnatural and unhallowed neon greenish hue.<em> Translator's Note: The chant in Valarin is loosely translated here with admittedly a bit of influence from more modern ideas of mythology than those then. The original version rhymed but was both terser and more scatological, to a point that one may conclude that whatever else the Ainur are and were, they were not made without a concept of obscenity referencing the hypothetical mother of the Allfather and personal anatomy of a goat.</em></p><p>
  <em>In blackest day, in brightest night, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>may those who worship the False God's might, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Behold her power, the Star-Queen's Light!</em>
</p><p>The neon-green starlight hurled straight for the pontoon bridges forming and the crowds of Quendi and even Maiar that were near it, and then in a sudden roiling power the Morgul-star, the first to see deployment on the battlefield of many, burned to ashes whatever it touched, reducing the Maiar to being unclad, outright disintegrating the pontoon bridges and every single trace of the Vanyar that had sought to ford the river in brute force.</p><p>The strike laid waste to the first effort of nine to cross the Forks, and Anaramba formed another such sphere and hurled outward, this time not at the Maiar or the Vanyar, but directly at the person of Aule the Forge-King himself.</p><p>Yet the Forge-King raised a hand on which gleamed Rings of golden hue, and in his assertion and a counter-note of surpassing power the Morgul-star faded to nothing, its notes unwinding into a strange mixture of wails like those of infants among the Children of Illuvatar and sighs. The lesson was not lost on the Maia. Where the Valar were, the Morgul-stars could not endure. Where the lesser Maiar and the Children were, the Morgul Stars became a dismal element of the battles that would follow, and others of the lesser Maiar would help to conjure such forces and to restrain them from the sight of the Children. </p><p>After the disaster of the first attempts to cross, Orome and the Ever-Young led their Maiar across the Narog in the north, and began to harry and lay waste to the line in the north. Against lesser foes, or those made purely to serve as the kind of skulking cowardly forces that the forces of Valinor still at some degree expected, this would have led to greater impact. As it was the Vala of the Hunt and the Ever-Young harried the army and rode around its totality, laying waste to bunkers and trenches with demonstrations of great and dreadful power. Mighty Jotnar rose from trenches to assault them both.</p><p>Four score and five they fell upon Orome and Vana. Four score and five they died.</p><p>In the wake of this rampage, the Second Battle of the River of Blood began with attempts to cross on both edges of the forks, in greater strength, with Mairon and Eonwe overseeing each. The sheer raw  power of Mairon's gifts amplified by the boosts and will of his Lords, and of Eonwe's valor meant that for the first time the Hosts of the West managed to cross the rivers, and to seek to hammer through the lines facing them. Anaramba could not be in multiple places at once, and Mairon's might had weakened her Morgul-star held by the tricks of her fell might within the power of starlight to a damper force that 'merely' gave horrendous burns that Este was able to tend to and restore as nothing.</p><p>Yet she came in person to face not the forces of Mairon's landing, at first, but those of Eonwe, and overconfident in her power from starlight came as a giant wreathed in starlight and the madness of her song sought to instill fear and trembling and panic in the ranks of those forces under Eonwe's command. Yet he, herald of Manwe, closest to he who is closest in the eye of Illuvatar, stood before her as a towering force slightly larger than the tallest Elves or Men with a gleaming sword empowered by the light of the Illuvatar Himself and with that light and the ferocity and speed of his sword the Maia was driven to retreat and her conjuration broken before it could be completed.</p><p>When she turned in turn to the left crossing, it was too late. The first two bridgeheads had been won, the Eldar hewn away, and formed into small, but powerful, squares marked by the presence of Vanyar and a higher than usual concentration of the more powerful Maiar.</p><p>For a month as time is reckoned in Middle Earth the Second Battle of the River of Blood had subsided and little more than minor clashes were made, as the Maia decided what to do next, and how to do it.</p><p>The Third would come as a great trial of strength where the Eldar led by lesser Maia on the right and Aranamba herself on the left would hurl themselves at the Host of the West and sought to break it and to drive it across the Forks. Ulmo's power rose in the waters and in that hallowed Music the star-song would dim, yet such was the fear of the Star-Queen's Maiar that the attack was pressed each night from sunset until dawn in unrelenting ferocity, spaced over two months. Nights came, those terrible howling nights where the stars sang in anticipation of blood, and seemingly not caring from whom the blood flowed, so long as it flowed.</p><p>Two months of terrible assaults of forces that occasionally ululated and howled in perfect harmony to the bloodthirsty chorus of starlight on nights that defied the cloud-cover of Manwe's Ainur but mostly chanted:</p><p>
  <em>A! Elbereth Gilthoniel!</em>
  <br/>
  <em>silivren penna míriel</em>
  <br/>
  <em>o menel aglar elenath,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth!</em>
</p><p>Neither heeding of their own injuries nor concern for those of their fellow soldiers did they display, and in the ferocity of the combat for the first time those Quendi of Valinor appreciated against what forces those of Arda had attained such results. Hard experience began to make of those troops rotated in and out of the bridgeheads more effective veterans, and the bitter and nightmarish battles against the chanting ranks that moved by starlight in discipline that became frenzied rushes and flashes of blades and the strange tubes that seemed to wield the very power of Manwe's thunder and lightning themselves became almost a monotonous routine, and with progressively greater ease each time. </p><p>The end of the second month came and another pause came that would endure in equal length to the battle that had preceded it. Small clashes took place between groups at most of twenties to sixties on each side, the dismal small exchanges of greater wars and nothing else changed. The confidence grew the greater in the ranks of the Host of the West upon the second month's dawn absent major attacks that the foe had taken their measure and was dissuaded, and for that time they planned what would become the Third Battle of the River of Blood.</p><p>The first of the Breakout Battles, for a month and a half the Host of the West sought to expand their bridgeheads and to link them together, for but two leagues separated them. Yet what was transparently obvious to them was also so to the enemy, which had but to die in place with no more expectation than this from its high command. By sheer unrelenting ferocity and the aid of ever more powerful Maiar the lines were hammered out a third of a league from each toward the other, but then the slaughter mounted to such a point that the offensive could not be further sustained, and would not be. With this limited gain the campaign would pause for two months, the left bridgehead transforming to a great wedge, the right forcing a straight line by the strength of Eonwe's sword and the fighters, Quendi and Maiar, at his side.</p><p>By the time what would become a third of the time of this lengthy and bloody clash had run its course, the Valar decided that their presence would reap greater results, and Orome would ride forth to harry the rear of that army again and to shrink its presence behind, even as the second of the attempts of the enemy to hurl their armies across the Rivers followed. For another two months of bloody and cruel fighting by night and resting by day the stars sang in glee and the armies chanted their praise of the dreaded Elentari in the Palace of Eternal Night, and this time with Mairon and Eonwe focusing on what would become the second set of prepared crossings to magnify the number of bridgeheads to force the foe to fight upon, the use of Morgul-Stars reaped a great slaughter and would lead in this Fourth Battle of the River of Blood to the loss of all the gains in the third.</p><p>The exultant ululations on the part of the Eldar were negated when news came of new crossings in greater strength, the song of Ulmo drowning out that of the star, and the foe adapting their very tactic of striking by night against them, rather than by day. New bridgeheads were gained in swifter and deadlier fighting, bolstered by Maiar of Nessa and Tulkas, who remained on the other bank in counsel with the Allfather. Of these bridgeheads, one had been won in the uninviting and unpleasant terrain of the Gates of Sirion, where an army including multiple Maiar of the Vardarin people had encountered for the first time she they called the Traitor and known to the Free Peoples as the former Queen of Doriath, who sought to honor her daughter's legacy in illustrating that the destinies one faced as heirs of a people, even among the Ainur, did not determine courses of fate.</p><p>Her own starlight, pure and hallowed, blazed at night and in that gleam and its hallowed elements the forces of the Eldar did what they would seldom do in any war and turned and fled. The bridgehead was narrow and difficult to exploit, and thus Aranamba dismissed it from her designs, focusing on the other three.</p><p>Winter came, then, and in that winter both armies settled into camps, the Eldar wielding the nights to draw forces from the irrelevant breakthrough on the far north of their line to reinforce others. Bitter had the fighting of this first year been, and even forces so willing to die and to die with ferocity could not sustain such losses without having to take some action to replenish their ranks. Aranamba understood well that it was never the Star-Queen's design to reinforce these armies, merely to 'reward' them for their ambitions and disloyalty to the Queen of the Higher Spheres by having them die in place and bury as many of their foes with them as they could.</p><p>Too, the armies of the West were chastened and granted that the counsel of the Elves of the Mouths of Sirion had been wiser than anticipated. Weaker might the Elentari be than in her glory days, hobbled by arcane elements of the power of incarnation on the bodies and nature of those beings called the Ainur, but that fire that glows in starlight is that which in a lesser form can end the civilizations of today's human race within twenty minutes for all time. No longer dismissing the power of the Star-Queen's armies, nor playing the more passive role to sustain courage and limit the star-chorus's direct influence, the Valar would take much more direct roles in the second year's battles, Orome himself taking command of the effort to link up the bridgeheads on the left, while Mairon and Eonwe would share joint command of that on the right.</p><p>The Valiant and the Dancer were still remaining in conclave with the Allfather, and then seemed to vanish into parts unknown, their absence noted and giving disquiet to their Maiar, who knew nothing of the departure of their Lady and their Lord.</p><p>For four months did the great slaughter on the lines of the Narog continue, Orome's sword and mount and the power of the Ever-Young amplifying with them the courage of the Vanyar as their armies marched toward the bridgehead won by Mairon. In full ferocity the Eldar remained in place and sought to die there until Aule emerged from a tunnel between their armies in the fullness of his form as Vala of the Earth and of its life-blood, and in the weight of his power added to that of the armies, what had been a slow and ponderous slaughter became a mercifully quick and devastating set of flashes only remembered in nightmares that had the survivors awakening screaming in the dead of night.</p><p>The bridgeheads on the left became linked in the Sixth Battle, the greatest victory won by the Hosts of the West, the advance on the right slower and in a more glacial sense, but still unstoppable.</p><p>A pause came, for three months. The absence of Tulkas Astaldo and Nessa, she who laid low the Elentari, became a thing of concern to the other Valar, who feared that history had repeated itself and that the Elentari had captured one or both. Their Maiar would take the front lines on a grand scale when the pause became the Seventh Battle, the last attempt to throw back both bridgeheads, a month of assaults that toward the end would become feebler and weaker.</p><p>Then came the Eighth Battle where, in a movement of great strength and power the Valiant came clad in that form of his own thought that had laid waste to Ulbandi upon the roof of the Eldaiosto, and with him his betrothed the Dancer, whose motions were faster than the lightning and the swift motion of serpents, and with them alike a great weight of armies of the Free Peoples who had moved secretly to the north, in such weight that no force of the Star-Queen's make could have held them down and restrained the power of their strike, blessed as it was by the swiftest and most warlike of all the Valar.</p><p>Aranamba would flee in the wake of the Eighth Battle with a trusted few Maiar to the northern lines in what had been the Kingdom of Doriath, where she was welcomed by an emissary from Angband as having succeeded wonderfully in all respects, and then was given command of new armies that were mustered in the realm that had been Hithlum, garrisoned atop the bones of Dor-Lomin of old. No forces punished for too great an exercise of will by suicide-by-strategy, these were newer and fresher legions, marking her first encounter with the frightened and starlight-cursed radiation-scarred bodies of Men that had gambled on the faithfulness and fidelity of the Star-Queen and found out what the gamble was worth.</p><p>The Ninth Battle of the River of Blood was often erroneously named and called the Battle of the Cauldron, for in the absence of the Maiar that led the resistance and had wielded the deadly Morgul-Stars and whose desires to wield them on greater scales were negated, the armies surged forth to entrap the entire remaining force of the Eldar in two iron rangs. Then began a long and ferocious battle that was more of a partial massacre of Eldar who refused even a prospect of surrender or flight, fighting to the bitter end. Long and dismal were the fights that occurred then, and the sorrows and sufferings of the Quendi of the Mouths of Sirion became more clearly understood by the Vanyar than many had wished.</p><p>Bitter had been the battles for the crossing of the Sirion, and bloody its harvest, but it was a victory and fairly won. </p><p>By the time the armies of the West split into hosts, one on the left led by Orome, the one on the right under Eonwe but with Tulkas and the Dancer given greater roles.</p><p>When their armies would reach the southernmost edges of the old Kingdom of Doriath in the Pools of Twilight, they were surprised to find no less than the Star-Queen herself waiting for them, clad in her armor with her eyes blazing with the singing light that thirsted for blood and carnage, her armor and her frame wreathed in her own star-flame, and smiling with that savage grin that marked her decision to go forth directly against the Dancer and the Valiant.*</p><p><strong><em>My old comrades</em></strong>, she purred.</p><p>She did not understand the look of shock on the faces of Tulkas and Nessa at seeing a scar on her cheek of the kind that Melian had told them was made during the Quest for the Silmaril. The Ainur did not scar, and held to themselves that a scar was a weakness of the mind made manifest in the body. The Star-Queen not only seemed to make no notice of the scar, but hammered her fist against her breastplate, a thrumming resonance of starlight echoing, causing howls of pain and outbreaks of star-madness in the ranks of her foes, and throwing them into disarray.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Author's Notes: This particular battle is one of the few heavily influenced by the shape of a historical IRL battle. The Battle of the Dnepr in WWII, where the USSR and the Nazis fought for three months until the Soviets crossed. It also owes some influence to the Battles of the Isonzo in World War I. </p><p>*A bit of foreshadowing for the next chapter here, but this version of the War of Wrath adapts in part an element of the Annals of Beleriand version on the War. In that variant Morgoth takes the field directly to face Tulkas and gets clobbered for his troubles at the Pools of Twilight. Here, the Elentari also has taken the field and sought to confront the Dancer and her fiancee at the Pools.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. The Battle of the Pools of Twilight:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Elentari, wearying of time on her throne and the weakness her presence brings to her servants, decides to take the field. No more does she desire to humble her siblings and rule over their spheres in a blasted land. Now, facing the Hosts of  the West, and in particular the Valiant and the Dancer, her goal shifts. From an orderly lifeless world to one of ashes and ruin, where none may prevail. </p><p>In Angband one who is shackled is freed.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Of the clashes of the Valar in the War of Wrath even Vanyar sources speak poorly. Only a few are known to any great detail. One of these is the first, where the Elentari herself came to the Pools of Twilight south of that which was once Doriath and fought the Dancer and the Valiant. This clash, the first to underscore both the horrors and the scale of the War, is also known as the Battle of the Maw. Of the Maws of the Void, one may see in the eyes of science that wonder called the singularity or the event horizon, or in the phrasing of popular culture, the black hole. Stars sing in a chorus of the damned that thirsts for blood. Their presence deforms space and time, and perhaps it can be said in the cosmology of Ea and of Arda of old that the Star-Queen brought time and mortality to the deep recesses of space before her descent upon Arda where she brought images of star-make and the dreadful fires of the outer Void. </em>
</p><p><em>Stars die in many ways, and several of them appear in recognizable form in these elements of myth and legend, to a point that astrophysicists find themselves drawn most to the War of Wrath, when the Elentari viewed her doom as come and sought to deny her foes a triumph if she was to be denied one in turn. The singularities she unleashed rival the supernovas, called Helldawns, for their sheer dreadful force. Beleriand was islands dotted by corpses in the wake of the great Godwar. The Maws of the Void are but one of the means whereby that came to pass. In the earlier tales it is said that 'even the lightning bolts and the snakes of the Queen of Trees and the starlight that hums and thirsts speak of themselves silently one thing in boast and that only where earned in deeds. Faster than Nessa-Dances.' In outrunning that force known as an event horizon the swiftest of the Valar is noted to have annihilated with her parts of Ossiriand in her return to the lines of the North. In this, too, there is only to be expected that which follows. To move at speeds not merely faster than light but sufficient to outweigh the death-throes of stars that change the nature of their hunger even to cannibalize their own is to wield power deadly and known only in the realms of stories within stories. Who has known the sword of Turin the Dragonslayer? Who has known the dreadful forces spoken of by Hazred the Apostate, who was rent in pieces by some beast of the shadows and a single word of unknown origin spoken by the daemon? Who then can surmise the power that would be unleashed where Gods go to war, and that which kindles the stars becomes what all stars are at their core. Forces of wrath and burning that deform the world beneath their weight?-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda,</em> translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE MERES OF TWILIGHT:</p><p>
  <strong><em>Ah, Nessa, Tulkas. So long has it been since we have made sight of each other.</em> </strong>
</p><p>The Elentari's eyes flashed with her starlight, and in the feral light that shone and thrummed with greedy thirst for all the blood spilled by each side there was much that was familiar. Yet her stride was slower and halting, and her motions with her hands brought gritting of her teeth. Tulkas, heedless of the fires that burned around her bellowed in challenge and threw himself forward to strike at her. With a look of contempt the Elentari ducked beneath a wild swing and then body-shouldered him against one of the pools, which began to boil and hiss as the heat from her presence struck. Nessa in turn moved with swiftness such that the star-flame that blazed and droned and sang from the Elentari could not touch her and in a motion of surpassing skill moved her hands from the neck of her betrothed, before taking a mace of the make of Melkor that had seemed to be summoned by her thought and hurling it with a great speed and strength reinforced by that speed into the breastplate of the Elentari, who in turn howled from the pain with a roiling screech that made the other two Valar look at her in surprise.</p><p>In form may the Ainur go, but so long as they go in the eyes of Melkor and Manwe and beyond both in truth the Allfather, their forms are only as much or as little duplicates of the forms of the Children as they wish. Only Melian the Maia had truer elements of the forms of flesh in truth, an element that shaped even her invisible shapes thereafter, often modified from that which had sat on the throne of Doriath in various fashions but seldom truly distinct from it. The Ainur knew pain, but it was not pain of mere wounds to fleshly form, and it took great force from Ainur, far greater than any mere blow of form against form, to deal true harm.</p><p>Elentari had descended from the skies in days of glory as a colossus of darkness that blurred and moved as smoke illuminated by dread starlight in the most ancient times. In such weight had she laid low lamps and trees, and contended with the Valar in their glory. Before the Pools of Twilight she was struck a blow by a mace of Melkor's designs and artifice that caused her to recoil in visible pain, a thing that with her scars and the visible traces of injury brought shock to the Dancer. Ever had the Dancer feared the Elentari though it was her fate to contend with her and to bind her, for to those who seek to bind the fires of the atom heedless of its true danger is only the folly of Mandos's Halls.</p><p>The shock passed quickly and as Tulkas moved in turn and with his great hands grasped the Elentari, braving the direct impact of her star-flame, he moved her up and struck her great blows against that armor, seeking to crack it, as she groaned in pain and the hatred and heat of her eyes intensified.</p><p>Steam rose from the meres, thick and befouled by the weight of that star-flame. which gave the mist unhallowed colors and eerie sounds that wailed like the voices of the damned.</p><p>Within it indeed the Elentari seemed to veil herself, as Tulkas shouted in great laughter.</p><p>
  <strong>You cannot hide from me with mere steam, Star-Queen! The work of the shadow-demon and the trees is not the pools of one who is our kin wrought this.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>She is of my kind, Dancer and Valiant. Of the Ainu tribe of the Vardarin, Star-folk beyond the Star-Blooded. Her works are of my race and of my kin.</strong> </em>
</p><p><em>You speak of race indeed! We are all one flesh and one work in the eyes of the Allfather, even Aule's creations! </em>Nessa's sounds were outraged in a way that brought a brief smirk followed by a gasp of pain as her hands clenched. </p><p>A snarl echoed and with the snarl and the ethereal howl the motion of the Star-Queen could be tracked, but tracking it did no good when hands wreathed in star-flame moved from the mist and grasped Tulkas once more about the neck, the heat blazing sufficient to start to bring him to his knees. When the mace of Melkor's work moved again Tulkas was moved in its path and it smote him and laid him low for a moment, stunned.</p><p><em>Coward,</em> hissed Nessa.</p><p>
  <em>No, not a coward. What happened with the Elf-Prince and with that mace is a lesson. You may not feel true pain, nor understand decay and our Father's Doom to those of Ainu-kin here, but in time you will. Has He not claimed that the deathless shall envy those of the Second-born? Perhaps the Dwarves, if certain concepts be true?</em>
</p><p>That mad laughter that warbled and burbled echoed like peals of thunder, the mists occluding her save where light moved and sang in choruses of the damned and where her presence was a thing weakened but no less dangerous.</p><p><em>What has happened to you?</em> Nessa hated the overt element of shock in the tremor of her voice, the way that the Elentari moved displaying that sense of visible and enduring wounds. </p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Time, and mortality. I am a being of flesh now, the Silmarils, the dragon, the sword of Fingolfin son of Finwe, they have all done their work. I am not what I was. Yet, in the end, bereft of all else, I am that fire that sustains and holds together a kingdom beyond your writ. and those fires burn even my thralls beyond my writ now. Were another to have fallen in my place you too would become this thing, decrepit and weakened. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Belkoroz, perhaps, or even my beloved Manwenuz.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>I, Baradaz the Great, who raised the stars and made them a chorus in my name have ringed Earth in fire.</strong> </em>
</p><p>With that the steam passed suddenly as a bolt of that star-flame lunged out and the horrified Nessa for once in her life was too slow and was dragged down out of its path by Tulkas, whose wounds recovered more swiftly in the wake of Este and Melkor's devising treatments.</p><p>She heard the Star-Queen sigh and they looked up to see her raising her right gauntlet, a sphere of singing flame wreathed in prominences of terrible energy forming above that hand.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>And I have erred, all along, in the end. I have sought when ruler absolute, Empress of the Known Universe, to master a world by showing you all that your spheres could be overthrown in your own terms. Leveling your works, draining the trees, the great war that is in motion even now. I am Queen of a realm beyond your concepts. Such pride you take, little Nessa, kinswoman of the Hunter, in your speed, or you, Valiant, in your arts of war and death. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>Such pride do all of you take, and it chafed, it chafed to see you all strut and prosper on so little a thing in so great a backdrop of mine own will.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The Elentari was hissing and snarling now, a low and rumbling breath from her that left heat-shimmers before her mouth.</p><p>
  <em><strong>But in turn I err, because I who command power sufficient to burn this world to ashes have found myself for a time a puppet dancing to my father's tunes, remaining on my throne and sending my daughter and others to wage war on my behalf.</strong> </em>
</p><p><strong>Daughter?</strong> Tulkas blinked. <strong>We are not to have children, and we have no need of children. We are immortal, souls intertwined. Even Ulmo links with all water that is or will ever be.</strong></p><p>The Elentari laughed as the star in her hand, fully formed, began impossibly to depress and deform into itself, the light groaning and echoing with a sepulchral dirge-like sound.</p><p>
  <strong><em>Yes, daughter. You have seen her before, my Hell-Queen with her World-Destroyers. Who was once Ilmare, greatest and mightiest of all Maiar, and close friend to Mairon herald of the Great King, Eonwe the Swordsman who leads thy armies, and is now my Erinti, my Surtur the Dark One who shall burn the world in fire.</em> </strong>
</p><p>
  <strong>What blasphemy speak you? </strong>
</p><p>
  <em><strong>No blasphemy, O Valiant. I have remade her, reforged her. Made her soul anew. She is as one of us now for much of my own power has gone within her. She did not want it, oh how she screamed.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The Elentari's smile was horrid, a smear of terrible light in a whispy element of darkness defined by that starlight.</p><p>
  <em><strong>But now she is mine, the image of what would otherwise have been with Manwenuz.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Still the light deformed and crushed in on itself and then things began to change, reality stretching and tapering into it.</p><p>
  <em><strong>You have seen my stars and veil yourself from their choruses. You now what their hunger is when it reaches out. Now, behold one of many prospects of what unfolds when my song reaches the end of one of its stanzas.</strong> </em>
</p><p>The first of what Nessa and Tulkas and their words related to Vanyar and to Noldor of the House of Finarfin would bequeath to the annals of Beleriand and the tales of its wars, and what would be identified only in the age of relativistic phystics as a concept of nothingness formed. It was a horrid thing, a great density, and reality deformed around it. Only its maker did it not harm or influence, and the steps of the Dancer were as lead where the Valiant could not move at all.</p><p>
  <em><strong>Behold, children of the lesser Kingdom, the power of the Greater!</strong> </em>
</p><p>Nessa did not hesitate, and with motions to her slow and ponderous picked up the full weight of her husband, and turned. Brilliant light flared, light that the Fallen could not bear in her state of weakness and she groaned in pain, yet the weight of the Maw devoured and crunched what was within it. In a terrible tearing and crunching sound the Twilight Meres began to unmake and seem to twist and be devoured, and the weight of the dead star increased and seemed to begin to rip into the very fabric of Beleriand around it. It is said as the Elentari spread her arms and laughed, even as a note of pain interrupted the warble and gave it a mechanistic stuttering set of barks, that the Dancer quite literally blazed and made devastation of her own, the full light of Valinor and beyond that of the Halls where a being on a great throne sits amidst the gleam of seven lights and in the eternal music of the spheres echoing. In her passage she sowed devastation much as the dreadful Nothingness did.</p><p>On his great throne on Tanequietl, Melkor detected the power immediately. Not yet in the time of Eru was it for him to leave the throne and with the Lord of the Seven Winds to take the field in person. Yet he did not need the motion of the Wind-Lord's wings or the power in his blue eyes to raise himself upon his throne and to call upon that portion of his gift he shared with the Star-Queen.</p><p>Stars sing and howl in an endless droning song, yet the Nothingness, the Maw that Nessa outran as a bolt of fateful lighting, was silent, and in that silence there was only the laughter of the Star-Queen, laughter until a much greater and more powerful Note of the primordial harmonics of the Great Music echoed.</p><p>In a single flash of terrible energy the Maw was closed and unmade, and unsung.</p><p>Yet the eyes of Belkoroz beheld the form of Bharadaz, weakened and scarred yet now heedless of her old ambitions, and she gave him a mocking salute.</p><p>
  <em><strong>All thy works, and those of our Father's verminous children, Belkoroz. They will burn, they will all burn. Send me beyond the doors? You shall be kings of ashes, with nothing left to you to rule! Dead stars and sorcery-stars shall halt all thy favored lines. Nothing shall be left to you, or to them.</strong> </em>
</p><p>She smiled and then strode to the north, moving more slowly, and gingerly, her steps deliberate and ponderous. Not merely her Maiar now, though they would command the battles. Her task was not the direction of armies, but no less than the breakdown of Melkor's great barrier between the spheres of the Valar and the starlight. No harmonious kingdom, only the wasteland of Melkor's first kingdom, and occasionally smaller ruin upon armies and refusing to allow them too soon an ingress to her fortress.</p><p>ANGBAND, NEAR THE THRONE:</p><p>Ilmare awoke as from a trance, the half-aware state that she had been in for some great span since her moth-no, her Mistress had made her ki-no, rewritten her soul and infected her with a virulent contagion of the soul. Yet in that contagion there was power and fear, and she turned to the shackles, one each on her right hand and her right foot. A few thralls looked to her, undeterred by the presence of the monstrous thing that would be the last of the Balrogs to come to the attention of future generations, slayer of Durin VI the Dispossessed. and confronter of a group of the desperate on the Bridge of Khazad-Dum.</p><p>So too did the future Bane of Durin, who looked at her with a pity that Ilmare grasped and hated. Whatever had been done to her had altered her, altered her power, made her far stronger. Mightiest of the Maiar she was akin to Nessa in power if she moved in the fullness of her strength at the dawn, and now she had become as one of the Aratar. It had defiled her soul and befouled her, but it had given her an enormous strength.</p><p>She raised her left hand and placed it along the shackle and the chain that held it. A droning sound echoed, not one of words but a thrumming power that shook the very fortress itself, made the metal molten, and it broke aside, and with both hands fell more swiftly that of her right leg. With a conscious assertion of will and her new power the infected wounds on her form healed, and she moved to her sword, forming around herself the impression of brilliant golden armor.</p><p>In its scabbard the Nightfall was massive, easily the size of a grown man, and marked with wicked runes of her own devising, a script to match that of Feanor for the Star-Kindred. The scabbard was ornate, constellations that gleamed and seemed to sing in glory on it, and she attached it to her armor, feeling a sense of relief and completeness that her weapon was restored to her.</p><p>Then, this done, she raised herself fully to her feet and looked the future Bane of Durin squarely in the eyes, and the glow in her eyes was brighter as a wicked smile carved across her face, a smile horribly akin to that of the Star-Queen.</p><p>Eldar, Quendi, and Men alike moaned in terror when her hand grasped the hilt of the Nightfall and drew it, and fire rippled along the blade, no longer purely star-flame as it had been. It was unhallowed, and before it the Palace of Eternal Night hummed in appreciation leavened by fear and horror, the fires of the Nightfall to come blazing in their fullness. No longer merely a weapon to raze kingdoms as it had already done, now it was a weapon capable of leveling Beleriand with a thought, or would have been absent the full weight of the Hosts of the West. In the light of that fire her own eyes mirrored it. </p><p>Then with that light likewise burning, she strode and none dared hinder her as she moved from the throneroom to the very gates, and stepped out onto a cloudless and starlit night.</p><p>Great armies had come, her mother was at war. The new Nightfall blazed before her with light to lay low worlds, a pillar of fire by night. With that gleam before her she strode south, to the wars.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. The Helldawn and the Nightfall Arisen:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Seeking to expand upon her warning of the Battle in the Pools of Twilight, from the new Great Chasm of Beleriand dividing the armies, the Star-Queen conjures a Helldawn. </p><p>And like a ghost arisen out of the ashes of the past, the Nightfall rises and falls upon a group of uncautious Vanyar who tread too close to the Palace of Eternal Night in the north.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>The first of the Maws, which would become a feature of the drive to the north in the War of Wrath, carved what became the Vale of Blood, a great canyon that became a vast trench fought over by armies of warring gods. As a new force and a sign that the Star-Queen herself had taken the field, it caused tremors in the ranks of the Ainur. The words of the Valiant and the Dancer that the Star-Queen was weaker did not bring great comfort, for it exposed a grim paradox. As the power of the Star-Queen atrophied, her fires retained their ruinous nature, but now could burn beyond even her own control and devising. Such would be the case with the fires of the first Helldawn, intended to freeze the lines and permit the armies moving from the south to move to the north. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In the eyes of modern science it is akin to that power known as the supernova, or very akin to it, a star conjured by and of its makers, overloaded with power, erupting in those dismal things that yet bring forth planets in the wake of their ruins. Freeze the lines it would for a time, until the forces of the West merely chose to move toward the ruins of Nargothrond and bypass the power of the Star-Queen.  Too, in the light of the horror caused when the Hell-Queen of the World-Destroyers revealed her survival in truth in Hithlum the Fire-Ruined, there was a disquieting rumor. Ilmare may have died but some new horror had arisen with the Nightfall at its work. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yet so great had the pride of the Elves of Middle-Earth become in the work of Beren and Luthien, that the tale of the death of the Hell-Queen endured thereafter, much to her profit, and so too did the changes to her power. For in the totality of destruction mystery and rumor did their work and it seemed that in her death had arisen a ghost of her own malice, the Witch-Queen of the Far North, known in darker whispers after the Helldawn and the First of the Maws as the Scourge of Eru. For a time the horrible flames and their novelty to the bulk of the hosts of the West who were of Elven heritage and who had never seen the dreadful fires wielded in warfare did bring the drive to a halt....but then together the Valar pooled their strength and their powers, and the advance began, slow and glacial, and unrelenting, and before the unfiltered might of all the Valar the Eldar would melt as snow before the summer sun. </em>
</p><p><em>But before the renewal of the advance, the day when Hell's dawn eclipsed that of the Sun.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>TWO DAYS FROM THE BATTLE OF THE POOLS OF TWILIGHT:</p><p>The Maw had done its work, devouring what it would take, and in the totality of its presence, and that power that worked within its elements, it had brought home to the Valar that the war had changed. Now the Elentari had come forth to burn and scourge the world, the Valar holding council in thought-speech with each other and with Manwe Sulimo and Melkor the Great King.</p><p>A group of Vanyar, thanes of King Ingwe himself, nine in number, sought to ride forth and infiltrate to the north in the tracks of the Hunter. The chasm deemed impassable, they sought to ride, and to ride north across the vast expanses, to decipher if the terrible force, horrid as it was, was merely a diversion or the first sign of greater horrors to come. This they did against the counsel of their fellows among the leaders of the Vanyar army, and against the grim face and stiff refusals of those surviving Noldor and Sindar of Beleriand. It was their hope that such a show of strength would both illustrate that only only Orome the Hunter and his Valaroma could slay monsters and traverse the kingdom of the so-called Star-Queen, but that it might reap great rewards.</p><p>With hope in their hearts and a song on their lips they rode, and it seemed as if Nessa's speed went with them or their horses were empowered by some greater force to traverse distances at speeds seen as impossibilities. Perhaps it was simply that the horses, beings of Valinor in their own right, were loathe to abide in territory traversed by Star-Blooded longer than they had to and moved in speeds of divine nature to not dawdle in such areas. Within three days they had crossed just over five hundred leagues from the lines of the West near to the gates of the Palace of Eternal Night.</p><p>The Palace had seemed emptied and yet it was not, new Star-Blooded forged out of captives and remade, reforged on her line, and new whelps of the species that were growing to strong manhood of their fashion, replicating elements of the very first armies. Yet it was their ill-fortune that as they rode past to note this, that they felt the heat shimmer and a terrible droning sound echo, a deep bass note that rumbled repetitively, like a drumbeat. The horses neighed in fear and threw their riders, then rode off and became feral and umananageable, yet it is of their lineage that Shadowfax and other great horses of the Third Age would arise.</p><p>The riders, all nine of them, were thrown and held their weapons of lightning closely, yet the heat did not dim but increased still further and then they saw an impossible figure, one reported dead. Her eyes shown with a dreadful amusement and at their shock and horror at both her presence and her increased size, she echoed with a booming laugh, her scabbard visible.</p><p>In bravery the nine had ridden, yet the titan that stood before them moved her hand to her hilt and drew the fabled Nightfall, which was more wicked seeming than in earlier tales, and fire danced along the blade like a great liquid and she moved in a sudden roaring howl worthy to match that of Melkor's dragons or the monsters beneath Angband that awaited the order to unleash them. Six moves and the nine soldiers were dead and the heat cauterized any blood on the blade, which rose as smoke that smelled of burned flesh and their bodies were hewn in pieces that had blackened and torn elements.</p><p>She snorted contemptuously, and of the Nine Riders of the First Age, no news came, nor would any ever come.</p><p>Not long from this encounter she looked upon and beheld Orome, who saw her presence and the distortions, slightly, where the weight of the world cracked under her being, and saw in her a mere monster of the Elentari of the kind that he had laid low. Then he noticed that the glint of her eyes were familiar and so too the smile, but when he grasped both the scabbard and the blade drawn from it, he froze. Even among the Ainur, the heritage of Melian of the Vardarin, in spite of faithful service to the Ever-Young and the Maiden of Rest had told against her as it had against Olorin for a time, and longer. With this confirmation writ raw that the Hell-Queen lived and had been monstrously transformed, Orome, who alone among the Valar had not been present at the prior battles, decided that it was time he and his Maiar, his Wild Hunt, would return to the lines of the Valar army. </p><p>There was news to bestow, and information to be found and to be had. The sparks of their horses and of the claws of his mount were flashes of light that deterred all but a small and foolhardy portion of the Hell-Queen's armies in northern Nargothrond, who sought to lay ambush to riders as foolhardy as those massacred by the Hell-Queen but were quite literally disintegrated by the fire of Orome's presence and his fury.</p><p>THE NEXT MORNING, AS DAWN RISES:</p><p>The Valaroma echoed and the forces of Orome returned to the line, as his fellow Valar echoed greetings and a continual set of exchanges in Osanwe. The news of the Hell-Queen's survival confirmed and with it the stories of Melian marked the point where her fellow Ainur at last began to view her as the survivors of Doriath did. At times did Melian the Maia walk among her former subjects, soothing hurts and bestowing upon them her grace and her protection. Alone of the major figures of the Ainur, she was not present in this conclave in the wake of the Maw's arising, spending time working to heal the wounds dealt to her student Galadriel, her face grim upon learning the fullness of their extent.</p><p>So was it that she was also one of the only Ainur figures who did not witness the Helldawn in its fullness, though the principles behind it had been no mystery. She remembered well when she had helped to raise the first seven stars and formed them as great spheres of singing flame that echoed in their horror the Star-Queen's capering and mockery, her promise that some stars would be greater than others, and when they would reach age or a point in her designs where their function was complete, they would quite literally burst like a pustule, their radiation helping to forge new stars. Even then the prospect of the Doors had brooded on her, and this had been established that if she vanished her Maiar in her starlight would know and would grasp greater schemes to ensure that never would the stars be in danger of perishing. Had they consulted her, of Vardarin lineage, and trusted Olorin sufficiently to heed his counsel in this war (a gap in trust that would be more than remedied in the era of the War of Ruin) they might have spared themselves much grief.</p><p>Yet bitter were the wounds of the Darkening and the Ban, and the realities that she had brought forth Luthien who had defied the doors of death, and Dior, slayer of two of the sons of Feanor and thus freer of them from their oaths. Of her living descendants Kemenred and Kemenurin had somehow survived being left in woods to starve, though their recovery was slow and they had gone to Valinor itself to recuperate in the gardens of Este. And there were the sons of Elwing, Kemenrond and Kemenros, who were in the clutches of the accursed Feanorians. Melian wondered why she would be so slow in seeking them. For her love, and the love of her family, she paid a price among her fellow Ainur as being seen at best as eccentric, at worst as more than slightly skewed and her Vardarin heritage as proof thereof.</p><p>So was it that while her power was welcome at the landing and the first skirmishes as a signal that she spent time healing wounds among the Noldor and Sindar and others afflicted by the Kinslaying, and did not begrudge the hatred. Luthien had earned her way around it, in part. She had not, not quite yet, not in fullness.</p><p>Yet she felt it all the same, for all among the Vardarin could and would feel such weight. It was a brooding and malignant thing, an eerie low rumble like thunder. She looked out from one of the tents, and froze. It was a cloudless morning, yes, there were few clouds the further north one went in Middle-Earth. But that was precisely it. It was cloudless, and there was a terrible booming sound like peals of thunder without any lighting.</p><p>THE CAMP OF THE FORCES OF THE STAR-QUEEN:</p><p>Hailed by her Legions in her absence, it was muted awe and silence in her presence. The Star-Queen remained on a great throne, forged of the bones of her foes, and conjured a vast star of maleficium, bale-work, a thing that brooded and weighed upon what was surrounded by it.</p><p>She smiled. Her hell-dawns, what later eras of humanity would term supernovas, were among the favorite works that she had forged, things to tempt humanity to stare into starlight, the few stars powerful enough to blaze in raw force during the gaze of Arien. The Maw had done its work to build the trench, but within a matter of mere years the forces of the West had advanced, overthrown a great fortress, and marched north, where they had crossed the great Sirion and overcome her forces by the Two Forks. Too far, too fast.</p><p>More power and still more went into the malignant thing that was forming just beyond the cloud-barriers and starting to burn them away as peals of low thunder rumbled and echoed with a terrible sound, one of the few times where the Star-Queen's stars did not sing. The cloud-barriers over the West glowed with a terrible heat and then seemed to crack with a snap like the breaking of ice, and above them hovered a great star that echoed with the laughter and the direct voice of the Star-Queen.</p><p>With Orome gathered, the Valar pooled their power, raising a great shield with supreme focus that shone like crystal and echoed with the pure music of the Ainur.</p><p>The starlight grew the greater in brightness and fury and the mad warbling laughter of the Star-Queen pealed across all Arda, and for one of the few times even the fledgling Irem of the Valusians and the great realms to the South and the East heard her voice directly, and they knew then that the Avari had told them truth. Gods existed and walked among them, but the one most active in walking among them was the monster that had come from the stars and brought her images with her,</p><p>THE TENTS OF THE MOUTHS OF SIRION:</p><p>Laughter pealed, once silky and beautiful beyond measure, now harsh and raspy, with a warbling trembling note like the whine of a great cloud of insects, and a second Sun rose over Arda, a great sphere that gleamed with a strange and terrible white light, a more gruesome mirror of Telperion writ wrong.</p><p>The Girdle was beyond her now, but Melian raised a great cloak of shadows with the fullness of her strength, and even those wounded of the Feanorians who had feared her and abhorred her suspecting the truth welcomed the cloak of darkness that shielded them from more than than the mad laughter that pealed even behind that veil and rose to a power that it made the very Earth and waters vibrate with its resonance.</p><p>THE CAMP OF THE FORCES OF THE STAR-QUEEN:</p><p>With a smile on her face the Star-Queen clenched her right fist and then the star that had arisen and squatted over the Earth, its power halted from simply outright annihilating the planet by fire and gravitational force by the weight of Melkor the Great King in an annoying reminder of just how dangerous that Vala was, exploded in a wailing psychic-sonic shriek that by itself caused birds to tumble from the sky and fish to rise dead in waters across sea and land, and brought clamors of fear and horror from those of the Vanyar who had never taken as fully as they should even in the wake of the war thus far the weight of starlight.</p><p>The Helldawn erupted in a sea of fire that clawed its way across the sky, a fire that droned and hummed and sang in power,  mountains became molten and trees that remained upon them caught fire, parts of the Narog and the Sirion and the Gelion boiled away and became cracked ground akin to the Anfauglith.</p><p>Yet together, the weight of the Valar within their spheres was no less absolute than she in hers, and they not weakening by the power of incarnation. Indeed, so hot did the fires burn that of her ranks that had begun to file south, more than half of them were burned to ashes, and the rest horribly burned and rendered useful only for shock troops, and the fires blazed from her control until Manwe's winds and clouds and Melkor's gifts with extremes of fire and cold dispersed them.</p><p>On a Beleriand that became the realm of Ashes, silence reigned. Its power deafening.</p><p>And for two years the war froze in lines around the chasm, even as the Valar and Maiar of Eonwe's forces immediately decided to merely divert power to the ruins of what had been Nargothrond. In the very deserts forged by that heat the Star-Queen had built lines to cross that her servants could not detect even the motion of massive hosts, and it was with this, too, and the wake of the Maw and the Helldawn that Melian the Maia became at last one consulted in fullness and truth, and in her counsel she taught much of the lore that the Vardarin knew and knew intimately, and provided guesses for how such effects might be countered, not least of which was entrusting to the Allfather and his regents, the Voice of Eru and the Great King, that evil could not triumph.</p><p>NORTH OF OSSIRIAND: </p><p>Even then, the Hell-Queen's leaving the fortress attracted the great displeasure of the Star-Queen, who nonetheless sought to make use of her. The Feanorians and their servants were hemmed in Ossiriand and showed no great willingness to march to the aid of the Hosts of the West, and indeed seemed to shun them, yet it would not do to leave several thousand troops, amplified by shellshocked members of the Hosts of the West that filtered to the Elven kingdom little concerned that it was a realm of Feanorians, under the command of all three remaining sons of the Jewelmaker. Such was the horrors of the Eldaioston, then the Maw that rent Beleriand and annihilated the Meres as if they had never been, then further the Helldawn that ruined the trees and left armies of the Feanorians and others at risk of exposure to starlight.</p><p>A brief and shadowy realm was carved from the dead trees (the Onodrim, Ent and Entwife alike of Beleriand having fled in the era of the Burning and long since departed).</p><p>News came that a small host, seemingly, of the vastness of the might of the Star-Queen had marched to the south using secret passages of the Blue Mountains in the wake of the sacking of the Dwarven Kingdoms, and that this 'small host' outweighed theirs by more than twelve to one was issue enough, though if strength had come to strength, such was the power of the Oath that no force of Varda's make could have restrained them. What caused greater disquiet was the report of a figure in golden armor wielding a scabbard of ill-repute from the era of the War of the Powers, a scabbard attached to a blade that had laid low Dor-Lomin and burned its inhabitants to ashes, leaving grief and sorrow to help spur the fate of the children of Hurin.</p><p>Even the Feanorians believed that it had been the teeth of Huan and the spell-work of Luthien that had slain the Star-Queen. yet the scabbard that held the Nightfall was well-known. And it sat ill with the Feanorians that even a ghost of the malice in the Nightfall could arise, wielded by the hand of another of the Star-Queen's servants. Thus was it that the Hell-Queen achieved her primary aim and satiated her mother's at the same time. Her armies neutralized any will of the Feanorians to involve themselves in the war, and in their presence deprived the hosts of the West of several hundred thousand of their own ranks, who skulked in the Dead Forest, deterred by a giant wielding the blade of a warrior who even in death held their ranks in fear.</p><p>Two years passed, two years of careful movement of armies in the Valley of the Helldawn, the Star-Queen's armies as content to remain idle, even if somehow she replenished the ranks with new armies, and her front lines were carefully managed by horribly burned figures in blackened armor, beings blind in one or both eyes and in wretched pain. From them the Valley of Blood gained its name and the elements of the bitter interchanges of the power of Valinor and Old Night, and in that vast valley of open-ended bones the stench of decay and its unlovely sights were its own deterrent to the actions of both sides, which in the event would aid the hosts of the West.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Of the Drive to the North:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After the pause in the war in the wake of the first Helldawn and the Maw that laid waste the Pools of Twilight, the armies of the West begin the great and inexorable drive to the north. For fifteen years their legions move, and Beleriand breaks and is laid waste in the strife between the Valar and the Star-Queen. At the end of this time, the hosts of the West stand at the gates of the Palace of Eternal Night.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>The War of Wrath, it is said, laid waste to the lands of Beleriand.  Of the precise details the stories in the Red Book are often inconsistent and read as mythology more than history, yet such is only to be expected when the incarnate Powers of Starlight and the Ocean and the Forge and Speed and all else wage war unconstrained. Before the Maw that devoured the Pools and the Helldawn that blazed Beleriand bare save where the will of Yavanna brought forth plants to sustain the armies of the West, the hosts of the West had displayed little appreciation for the full severity of the power of the North. Nor, in truth, for the fullness of what for so long the Noldor and Sindar and Men of the Dawn-time had fought with such valour against. More appreciation was given in these senses to the tales told and recorded, so it is said, in Valinor before its veiling and transformation into storied Avalon and Alfheim, in the wake of the War of Wrath than had been so when the spirits of the slain Quendi of the War of the Jewels which were freed were let loose in new raiment of flesh. Yet once the fullness of the madness of Elentari and her legions was brought home, against this strove all the Valar together, even as Melkor and Manwe were not yet loosed in the fullness of their strength yet the Lord of the Seven Winds and the Great King of all Arda granted to their allies the fullness of what power could be worked from a distance. Fifteen years and great slaughter from the expanse of what had been Nargothrond into that which had been Doriath, north into the ruins of Dor-Lomin where Nightfall fell and laid it low, north from Hithlum and Himlad and then at last to the greatest trial of strength in the slaughter of the Battle of the Anfauglith.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>When the armies of the Lords of the West began to move not north across the Valley of Blood but to the west, into the region that had been Nargothrond, it took time for the Star-Queen to grasp that the war had changed and so had the strategies of her foes. A few who were made to serve as thralls and came to Mandos noted that she seemed at times to freeze on her throne and to speak and to gesture at some invisible force that mocked her, a sign of madness and decay in a mind the more fearsome as in these hallucinations her star-flame burned beyond her control and ravaged her own armies. Maws opened and devoured the land and armies of both sides impartially, in their great emptiness, but Melkor the Great King dispelled them with the power bequeathed to him by He called Allfather. Helldawns burned when the Elentari grasped even as the armies of the West fought their way across the Narog and the Elentari's monsters, drawn to her summons, clawed their ways down the blackened mountains and out of the hard and cracked grounds left by her flames sought to assail them.</p><p>Slow and bitter was the advance, the caged lightning of the weapon of the Vanyar wreaking great slaughter, yet where the Eldar held lines that could not be displaced neatly, careful works of the artifice of the Elentari's Maiar, advances would stall and even in some cases experience local reverses, yet they would not stall indefinitely and where the flow-tide of the great armies of the West moved, they could never be stopped, merely delayed. Great and terrible were the battles of Nargothrond, the second fall of the city matching that to the Hydra, the rubble destroyed anew as Eldar fought with a tenacity made of despair and a mortal terror that what they termed 'the dead stars' would slay them and better a death at the blade and the light of Aman than that of the uncontrollable star-flame of their mistress.</p><p>Anaramba fought in a bitter and savage war as the general of the Elentari's armies in Nargothrond, and under her command seven years of fighting followed, mile by scorched mile, as the armies of the Elentari began to find even the fearful element of her Star-flame that seemed to burn progressively hotter and more fearsome, scouring what it would as it would with nary a trace of friend or foe to it less fearsome than the power of Aman that shone in the ranks of the West, and the might of the other Valar, greater and lesser. Before the armies would ride the Hunter and with him the Ever-Young, and their legions of the Wild Hunt that scoured and laid low the throngs of the Star-Blooded.</p><p>Too they slew great beasts, the Lion of the Fire-Eyes, and monsters that were vaguely akin to the most ancient of the Kementari's creatures but altered, the Star-Blooded creatures with eyes that glowed with starlight and backs that gleamed a brilliant blue hue. In pain and misery had these creatures lived until the Helldawns had slain their prey and left only the very largest and cruellest of the breed, likewise the architects of the demise of their own kind. When the Valaroma sounded they knew, as they had known before, that horns meant prey, and so giants with backs that gleamed and hummed with starlight and eyes that glowed the blue hue of the very hottest of the Star-Queen's creations would storm against the Hunter and his Wild Hunt.</p><p>In scores or singly would they assail the Hunter and yet before his power and that of his great function and the flashing light of his sword no fell beast of the Star-Queen could withstand such force.</p><p>In scores and singly did monsters of the Elentari assail the Hunter and the Ever-Young, they who are the dim shades of Oberon and Titania, of the Satyr and the Nymph. And in scores and singly they died, bodies broken, corpses that joined the vast harvest of the dead the war reaped. The fall of the monsters and the echoing primordial howls of their death-throes wearied on the Eldar, and even on Anaramba herself. For the general of the great armies of the War for Nargothrond had descended from the stars where her mistress's chorus ring loudest, and had seen little of the horrors of war, especially war as her mistress waged it upon the Earth.</p><p>The power of dead stars was unleashed and in sheer weight created maelstroms on land, and portions of Nargothrond dwindled and ever more eastward did the coastline move, hemming in the armies of both sides. Against the power of the Star-Queen was arrayed all the Lords of the Valar, in person or on winds and in the very Presence of the King and the Voice of Eru. Where her fires blazed the Host of the West suffered but her own legions suffered the more, such that the fires burned and scoured and withered away Beleriand yet her own armies withered the faster, and in this sense Anaramba at last despaired, seeing to what she had given her service.</p><p>It is said that she, cruel and lit in the fires of her mistress, flung herself directly at no less a foe than Tulkas the Valiant, healed of the terrible wounds given to him in the Battle of the Pools of Twilight with a great mace lit with star-runes, yet Tulkas caught her in his hands and smote her hip and thigh and her body broke, and at that the ground shattered and the armies of the West came to the bitter fighting in Doriath.</p><p>In Nargothrond they had marched from the south, toward Doriath they marched from the north and built their own lines, named the Lines of Doom, and to that Doom marched the armies of the Elentari, singing death songs in honor of she they called Star-Kindler. Doriath was not scourged in the way that Nargothrond had been, and yet the Star-Kindler's flames blazed ever more potently and continuously, terrible flashes that melted armies and mountains like snow before the summer sun echoing, things that were akin to Star and Maw alike that created a great chasm until the arts of Melkor unmade them, Helldawn and Maws forming and smiting Doriath such that Beleriand, in the wake of a campaign of six years, was reduced to Ossiriand and to traces of Himlad of old, and to the Anfauglith.</p><p>Great was the might of Ulmo of the waters and of Aule the Forge-King, Lord of Earth, mighty the Green of Kementari and the tears of Nienna, sweet the music of Este and glorious the feats of arms of Valiant and of Dancer. Of the Hunter and the Ever-Young the Wild Hunt laid low forces and sowed dismay and dread fear as great as the Star-Kindler, for no fire of her kindling could strike Orome the Great, no desperate and fumbling use of enchantments could overawe Mairon of the ranks of Melkor and Aule, whose might in sorcery knew no equal even among the Valar, great and splendid in Arda. Of all that was in Arda or would ever be none could rival Mairon in the art of shifting shape or in the singing of songs of the Great Music.</p><p>Valor did Eonwe, greatest of swordsmen, display, and it was held to be fear of Eonwe that restrained the dread spirit that held the sword Nightfall and hemmed in the Feanorians, the Kinslayers and Kidnappers, and their ranks of the desperate. But once would the Feanorians' followers seek to break that restraint and to march to the north to be in at the death. It is said that the dread spirit that remained there raised the sword Nightfall and of this attempt came nothing but the burning of the north of Ossiriand and the drying of its northern river. The Nightfall fell and nothing came of that effort save  a lost and muted valor.</p><p>For forty years did the War of Wrath ravage and lay low Beleriand, and it was in the twenty-sixth year of the war that for all the dreadful strength of she who dwelt in the Palace of Eternal Night that the armies of the West came to the greatest of the battles of that war since the time of the Battle of the Two Forks.</p><p>The Anfauglith, the Grasping Dust, creation of the Star-Queen in the Burning, held the last of the great armies of the Eldar of this age and it had grown in the time of captivity from the foul harvests and wretched arts of Star-Blooding to beyond count, and great were its lines. Indeed, of the two hundred and fifty leagues of the Anfauglith, not one was absent ranks of the Eldar. Not yet, even then, in the arts of Illuvatar had it come to the point of unleashing His Voice and the Great King, yet both unleashed in this time the spirits of Sulimo Lord of the Seven Winds called the Eagles, led by their King Thorondor, sire of the later Eagles of the Second and the Third Age, whose wingspan was fifty five fathoms long, and Anacalagon the Black, Lord of Dragons, whose size was greater than the Eldorodrim that sang with the chorus of stars.</p><p>With each of them came the full weight of the skies and their wrath and the sign that the time of the ending of the Age was drawing nigh and the fall of the Star-Queen. With them and the sign that the full weight and judgment of the Valar came did the armies of the West, tried and wounded and their ranks thinned by bitter battles and slaughter pause as the Valar themselves and their Ainur with them took the field. Awesome had the might of Elentari grown and yet against the weight of all but two of the Valar and all the Maiar of all the Valar even if the Voice and the Great King had not yet come, it availed her nothing. The last of the Eldar melted as snow before the Summer sun, only the ranks loyal to Elladan, eldest son of Elrond Palantir, successfully fleeing through the Blue Mountains to ransack Gundabad and there build a secret sanctuary from whence the Eldar would grow and inflict new miseries in time to come, withstanding that force. The last of the Balrogs took the field, in their fullness, their lords slain and seeking to do themselves honor.</p><p>All but three were slain, the three flying south in desperation, where but one would come to the attention of later years.</p><p>The Ered Gorgoroth and the Nan Dungortheb likewise were smote and laid waste, Ungoliant devouring herself some time prior on the wake of the Helldawn, and on a night, those fearful nights illuminated and resonating with Star-Song, a vile and offensive odor erupted from the Valley and a great cloud of smoke hid the ruins of Doriath and the boneyard that sprawled across what had been its northern expanses, and in that darkness fled the spawn of Ungoliant where they would at times where the Star-song grew the great spin foul webs and stalk vengefully to plague the forces of the Free peoples and the ruler of the World-Ravagers with her sword Nightfall that scourges equally.</p><p>Never had the Host of the West seen the full power of the Valar unleashed, and seldom, if ever, would even a small taste of it be granted. Truly did they wonder that in such devastation that those who could have unleashed it had bowed to the Jewelmaker of old as if he had answered them as an equal, and yet in the end, the slaughter on the Anfauligth, the Nirnaeth in reverse, had finished when the armies marched north, five hundred leagues against no force but the roiling fires and the grim songs of the Elentari.</p><p>Twenty six years had the war raged, and now new armies ringed the outskirts of Angband and its vast mountains. The Valaroma and the horns of the other Valar rang in a great challenge. And from the Eldorodrim echoed a deep and primordial foghorn-sound between music and the howl of a deranged monster, as the Elentari met the challenge with music of her own. Now, from her throne, she knew that there was nought else to loose, and so began the long and bitter battles that would span fourteen more years, as the last of her monsters and ever more powerful Star-Flame would blaze, until at the very end, her daughter far sundered from her in distance and the ruins of Beleriand, she would unleash that force that none would have reckoned within her arsenal, for here the stories of the children of the Noldor and the Sindar were confused.</p><p>The Star-Dragons, the brood of the Hydra that had laid low Nargothrond and brought with it the demise of the Children of Hurin Thalion of old.</p><p>All of this was in the future, for a time, the armies of the West rejoiced and the fanfares of each of the Valar and the shouts of the Vanyar that 'Day has come again! Arien drowns the light of the stars!' echoed around its expanses, the Palace of Eternal Night all the same showing how it had come by that name, for here the writ of Arien and Tilion was by some strange art gainsaid and no clouds could form enduringly, and those terrors that sing in the night echoed in the fullness of their glory even in the weakness of she who was their maker.</p><p>The daylight of Valinor strove against the starlight, and after seven of their fanfares echoed that monstrous primordial foghorn-bellow, and in that bellow was mirrored the sudden shift in sound of all the stars to echo with it, a clamour that brought a deafening silence to the field.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Of the Second Siege of the Palace of Eternal Night and the Star Dragons:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>For thirteen years the Host of the West lays siege to the Palace of Eternal Night as starlight blazes and monsters rise and seek to plague its armies and monsters fall. On the thirteenth year, Varda Elentari deems the last extremity has come, and releases her great horrors, the Star-Dragons.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Of the Second Siege of Angband, in the eyes of mortals, the Third in the eyes of the Powers, little detail has survived. It is said that many battles were fought, dark and pitiless, where great creatures were sent from its depths and teeming hordes of broken and shambling Star-Blooded. Yet the power of the Valar and the Vanyar, though tried by earlier losses, could not be moved. Great star-flame burned and the armies of the West burned with them, but they could not be moved. So, at the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the last month of the thirteenth year of the Siege the gates boomed open and the great Star-Dragons swollen and fed on Elf-flesh and Man-flesh and even that of the Star-Blooded irrupted outward. So terrible was the splendor of their appearance and their power, that the hosts of the West were hurled back and the war nearly won in spite of all other losses faced. And at last, the Seven Winds howled and in full splendor came the brothers Manwe of the Seven Winds, and Melkor the Great King, Lord of all Arda, released from his throne to destroy his sister's monsters, and with the other Valar to lay low her fortress.-</em><em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>For twelve years the Host of the West would fight great battles before Angband, the Palace of Eternal Night thrumming with the terrible songs of the Elentari. For twelve years, after the horrors of the earlier advances and the grim bloodshed on the Two Forks, the Battle of the Valley of Blood, and the grinding war in Nargothrond and in the Lines of Doom, the Hosts of the West contended against the full might of the Elentari, whose last dregs of strength and ability to contain her own dreadful fires were spent in the wake of holding that line. Nothing was left to her to lose, for her Eldar had been burnt to ash or fled.</p><p>Her great Maiar, the Balrogs, were destroyed, and her daughter remained in the south wielding the Nightfall to contain the power of the Feanorians, and in this sense to remain safe from the fate that the Elentari feared and rightly so, would have become hers if the truth of what she was and who she was was uncovered. Yet in the old War of the Powers the Valar had not cleared out the expanses of old Utumno, and there were many creatures multi-eyed and swollen and marked with great weeping sores that had endured from that day. Abominations in form and flesh and soul, warped and deformed by the Starlight and its great song. None rivaled Anacalagon or the great Star-Dragons whose father is the Hydra and whose spawn rose as another ghost of her malice to plague Men and Elves and Dwarves in the ages to come. Yet they did not need to be  great forces that combined with the roiling power of the Starlight and the continual thrumming malice of its song that awoke bloodshed and frenzies even among the lesser Maiar that did not always spare even their own kind from each other to present sore trials and challenges. Only the combined might of the Valar, and the great strength of the golden hands of Tulkas and the lightning speed and power of the Dancer and the great-sword of the Hunter and of the Herald of the Lord of the Seven Winds meant that the trials were not worse.</p><p>Of these monsters dim shadows have survived in the legends of vengeful beasts in countless lore. The Lion of the Stars slain in the march to the north  was ancestor of the Nemean Lion. There were giants that had legs like snakes and mouths that spat venom and diseased fire akin to starlight, akin to the Gigantes of the Hellenes and of dread Typhon. There were things with multiple heads and arms and weeping wounds that came from the gates and roared in broken speech of the Ainur and of Mortals, and charged toward armies. Slow and bitter were some of them to die, and the more crafty were not averse to hiding behind the bodies of their slain kin, or even beneath them.</p><p>From time to time when the Valar would focus on containing the dreadful Star-Flame, a task that would try them as thoroughly as having to move from this to contesting the monsters did, hordes of Star-Blooded in the same kind of shambling and distorted and swollen forms that had plagued the old Sindar realms of old Beleriand before the God-War leveled it and left it to fall into the depths of Ulmo's realms where only he the lord of all the ocean knows of it and of its fate. Yet now these were not the Vanyar contemptuous of the creatures of the Elentari, nor caught unaware by those tricks well familiar to Noldor and Sindar who had fought the Wars of Beleriand. Now these were the Elves of Valinor hardened and made wise in the way of the Star-Queen and of her horrors, and the abominations of the Fallen fell before the Quendi of the Blessed realm nearly as swiftly as before the Ainur themselves.</p><p>Great strife there was between the more vengeful Maiar that took shapes of monstrous hue of their own thought lit with fires of star-make within them and the sword of Eonwe with the magick of Mairon aiding it, yet such was the knowledge of Mairon, a sorcerer to match even the greatest of the Valar, and his lord Melkor, that no artifice and cunning illusion or desperate gamble from the Star-Queen could penetrate his sight.</p><p>Nine great battles were fought and countless lesser, the power of the Star-Queen surging ever more greatly and as she weakened herself in malice and hatred and the desire for vengeance the Star-Flame that had burned and then dimmed began to burn and that continuously, and yet more of Beleriand began to disintegrate, becoming as islands that would mark where in the past had been Mouth of Sirion and Bay of Balar. The Teleri then came at the last to rescue those who had fled the Kinslaying and remained far to the south, Nienna and Este soothing wounds with many though not all, and brought them beyond the range of that destruction lest they perish in the uttermost.</p><p>Terrible and savage was the fighting at the gates, the decay of the Star-Queen making her power both weaker and yet more deadly, for the light that burns in stars that light the darkness of the night and make it shine and sing in monstrous glory that only the most foolish and the unhallowed gaze upon unhindered (and of all sorcerers, he who calls himself astronomer has ever been the greatest of foes, as it is said that Abdul Hazred of Yathrib was astronomer first and gazed too long on the Great Sickle, that called the Big Dipper in other spheres, and on the singing star Polaris that laid low the land of Lomar even in the realm of Dread Lorien himself) is a thing to tax even its wielders and requires great strength that it not hollow them.</p><p>Yet when hallowed it is the lifeblood of Existence itself that burns and scourges and it is a power deadly enough that it lit the skies over the Palace of Eternal Night with a bright and hellish glow that no artifice could dim.</p><p>And here, at the last, when the weakest and most frail of the thralls in Angband of Quendi and Men were left, when her strength was run so hollow that her darkness faded and she became a being of howling droning madness and fury seeking to scourge the world in fire, came a time remembered in dread and in fear by the hosts of the West, and even by the other Powers.</p><p>The very roof of the Palace of Eternal Night shattered in a single ear-rending sound that was not wail nor scream but elements of both. Great things rose, four of them, lesser only to Anacalagon and dread Thorondor, wreathed in darkness and stormclouds and crackling with lightning.</p><p>Their voices echoed with music as though three bells echoed, and from the stormclouds came bolts of dreadful power that both were and were not lightning, and before them and the weight of their combined power even the enduring strength of the Vanyar quailed. Long had the Star-Dragons been nursed and strengthened by the might of the Star-Queen to a point that only the spirit that arose in her image and in her likeness to burn the world in Fire in the War of the Hell-Queen and the Elves, in the Downfall of Westernesse that was Atlantis, and in the great War of Ruin of the Third Age matched it for potency.</p><p>Thunderclouds echoed and brought with them an unhallowed rain that burned as of a deadly acid, and in that acid the foremost ranks of Vanyar quite literally melted into slurries of metal and blood and bone, and in that sight the ranks of the Vanyar broke. The Valar fought and fought strongly, and before them the power of the acidic rain and the thunderbolts were constrained, and weakened that to mortals they merely dealt great harm yet it took the full weight of all the Valar to do this to contain them this much.</p><p>Then the thunderclouds dispersed as a wind cold and fearsome came from the West, first a small breeze that came counter in current to the stormclouds of the Star-Dragons, and from that breeze came a gale of sufficient force with the light of Aman great and terrible within it that the darkness brought by them that echoed with the malice of Elentari shattered. The breeze brought in its train a figure of splendor unimaginable, wings of blue that gleamed with a neon hue of brightness painful for even the other Valar to see in their fullness, wielding a great mace that gleamed with the hallowed light of no less than Eru himself.</p><p>To his right there came a figure in power and majesty greater than any other of the Valar, a great mountain that waded in the sea with head above the clouds, clad in ice and crowned in smoke and fire. In his eyes was a light brighter than the star-flame of the Elentari, and in his voice was the echo of the Doom that had come to the Star-Queen at last.</p><p>The last of the Valar to come to the field took their places in the vanguard, even as starlight echoed its hellish chorus and the armies of the West had fled from the gates of Angband to the southern end of the Anfauligth. So came the Dragon-Hunt, a deed that with all the might of Melkor focused on this task was followed with the Year the Stars Sang, when the Earth was smote by their full gaze and the power of Melkor was moved from Aman to war. Many a year since the dawn of the creation of Arda had the full weight of Melkor's power been devoted to shielding Arda, a task unseen in its fullest even by his fellow Valar in whose gifts he shared a portion.</p><p>For but a single year of dreadful combat the power of Melkor was removed from this task, and at last the full weight of Varda's stars smote the world. Oceanus shrank, and widened, and in the sea-steam entire communities that lived too close in the great south vanished. Star-madness stalked the world and a sword time, a red time, echoed where men took swords to slay men and the Avari of the South took a great step to their own extinction in warring on their own. Within this time each of the Star-Dragons was hunted, and slain.</p><p>One fell on an island that would be one of the largest islands remaining. The Isle of the Slain Dragon it would come to be known in later years and no wholesome thing could grow upon it again. In later years it would come to be known as Greenland by those tossed at sea and lost there in dry irony, and the shape of strange bones were visible therein.</p><p>Others fell and were smote between the weight of Melkor and of Mairon, who together slew one with a scarred eye as Melkor took on the form of a great saurian with jagged bones protruding from its back, gleaming flames of hallowed Valinor echoing from his mouth and negating the star-flame of the dragon, creating the Ashfall that laid low other islands of the Seven Deaths of which the Isle of the Slain Dragon was the largest.</p><p>The Star-Dragons were giants and they did not die easily, nor cleanly, and no less a power than Melkor himself in his fullest spent much time that their fall would not unleash the poisonous music of the stars and unmake still more of the world and render it accursed by star-light to be a realm where no clean thing could live for thousands upon thousands of years if not more besides. In the wake of the power of Melkor and the Lord of the Seven Winds Beleriand was sundered still further, and then at last the full might of Melkor was unleashed upon the Palace of Eternal Night, which was sundered by his great Grond, and before the fires and colds of Melkor the palace crumbled and was unmade. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Of the capture of the Elentari and her passage beyond the Doors of Night:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Palace of Eternal Night falls, Nessa the Dancer contains the Elentari once more with the Aiganor. The Valar remove themselves from the clash of the Powers for a time to hold her second trial and to sentence her beyond the Doors of Night, where she is placed until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>The fall of the Palace of Eternal Night and the thrusting of Elentari beyond the Doors of Night might have been the expected place for the narrative of the War of Wrath to conclude, yet no moreso than the end of the War of Ruin with the fall of the Hell-Queen and the unmaking of her monstrous Ring of Power for all time is this quite so. The Oath of the Feanorians still drove them as great daemons, and a judgment of the Valar was to be given that those Elves who had rebelled and become a portion of the Kinslaying were to seek pardon, or to remain in Arda. Too, the end of the war and the decline of the First Age was a matter as much of a more painful sundering that would only be made remit at the end of the War of Ruin, when the crafting of Rings of Power to stay the tumult of the Star-Flame was unmade. Elves were sundered from each other still more deeply, and a reward for the Edain who had endured war and its ruin and the thralldom of the Elentari given. The last of the First Age was heralded with the formation from the deeps of Ulmo's realm of a land of Faerie that at one level was entirely human and yet within it ran the blood of the Ainur in its nobility, and from them and the recruitment of the common folk, even the peasants of Westernesse in time to come. Westernesse the Great, where Humanity became as Gods, living centuries upon centuries, and attained a height and bliss never matched again in any other era. And in all this, the Elves and Edain held that evil had fallen with the palace and the vanishing of whatever entity had held the sword Nightfall, and yet in the end, it was not so.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE THRONEROOM OF THE ELENTARI:</p><p>Melkor had laid low the palace, but well he understood the danger of wielding starlight, the moreso when the figure on that throne with her hands blackened and burning in a pain not of her own making and a fire hotter than her own, face scarred to what in the Ainur is equivalent to bone from the talons of the dragon, motions stiff as with the effects of old age upon Men from wounds dealt her by the Elf-King Fingolfin of the House of Finwe. In her her starlight had burned mad and beyond her power to contain, and it was awareness of what could be in that portion shared with the Feanturi that led Melkor to devise alterations in the Chain of Aiganor. Not to him nor to any other of the Ainur was it given to dampen or to negate the essence and the being of another, yet hallowed was the chain by Eru that the fires of the Elentari be stilled enough that she be safely sent beyond the Doors.</p><p>It was the Dancer, fastest of them all, who moved faster than the Starlight of the Elentari, who strode into the throneroom, her betrothed beside her.</p><p>She, and all the Valar, would be stunned at the sight of what awaited them, and the pondering of the transformations that had worked their way into the Elentari would never leave them and would dim their joy in the Blessed Land, and serve as a reminder of the stern fates dictated in the Music.</p><p>Once a voluptous figure who had flaunted this in the shape and curvature of her hellish, singing light....now the Elentari was rail-thin, rangy, the starlight that was akin to her hair disheveled, parts of it across her face. Her iron crown glowed with molten heat and the Silmarilli were at a brilliance and a beauty even their creator could never have imagined, the hellish gleam of the Elentari amplifying their inner light.</p><p>She who had ranted and screamed and ever been a spirit of words and sneering contempt was breathing heavily, drooling flames, and crouched in a semi-feral posture more akin to that of the beasts of the Kementari than that of one who had once been as regal as the other Ainur. Guttural sounds in what might or might not have been Valarin echoed, those who had remained by her at the last ashes and bleached bone and her very throne run into a pool of molten metal that gleamed like trails of lava across the floor.</p><p>Enough of the old Varda remained that her feral gaze narrowed and her purpose became singular and she sprang at the Dancer, yet faster than the light she wielded was the Dancer and in the most graceful and yet painful (for though the Elentari understood it not even the Dancer felt pity for her and for what she had been, and horror at the sight and the extremes to which incarnation had laid her power low) dance that she would ever do, binding the Elentari with chains that gleamed with their Father's might made manifest.</p><p>The fires that had run wild dimmed and the Elentari was in a shape loosely akin to the forms of the Children of Illuvatar, yet her hue was a brilliant bone-white, her eyes gleaming with hellish starlight, and her mouth locked in a feral snarl. The Silmarilli were taken from her by Eonwe, Melkor withdrawing in the wake of the breaking of her fortress by the fall of the greatest of the Star-Dragons that had smote it and shattered the North as the south had been broken in the wake of his fall. Thralls came then from Angband, numbers depleted by the foul Soul Harvest that had decided who was damned to the fate of the battlefields and who was not, an act of great evil in the sight of Illuvatar, and stared into the broken islands that had been Beleriand, where corpses lay broken.</p><p>Beleriand, which was once, was no more and its glory lost as totally as that of Westernesse to come would be. Bound by the chain and given a raiment of Vaire's make that was dark and shielded her flesh, the snarling feral being that had been the Elentari thrown down before the molten traces of her own throne stilled when her eyes caught those of Manwe, and the feral echoes faded to become a small mirror at the end of her time incarnate. Her old aloofness and haughtiness reasserted itself to a degree, even as hair dark as night and streaked with starlight that sang muted choruses of thirsting for ruin trailed along her back and strands of it along her face, and she was taken by the Valar in a motion of thought before the Mahanaxanar.</p><p>The molten crown was taken by Aule the Forge-King and made a collar for her neck, attached to the Aiganor, and helping to restrain her hands. Unlike the first trial her mouth was not barred from speech, though she said nothing, hearing the terms of her trial with a silent and aloof disinterest. The trial was simple, the verdict still moreso.</p><p>She was allowed to walk escorted by the Great King and the Voice of Eru at the van of all the Valar, even Ulmo Lord of Waters, to that great artifice known as the Doors of Night.</p><p>In the great expanse of Existence that which is called Ea is that which in the terms of mortal science is the Universe, a vile and grim place where the Elentari's chorus echoes even with her spirit locked behind the Doors. Arda is that planet called Earth, and is of Ea and yet is its own realm beyond it.</p><p>The Doors are in the uttermost west of Valinor, a place that is as much a concept of metaphysics as literal doors, vast and ominous, an arch upon which was written in Valarin an inscription that has endured in other contexts, most famously in the works of Aligheri, where in his ninth level the Devil remains moored in ice and her eyes glow with starlight and her hatred is such that it keeps her ensnared in a hell of her own making. Upon the arch words were written in a script known only to the Ainur, yet the inscription is known to the Quendi, to whom belief is had, for true or error, that Feanor of the Quendi worked for a time and engraved it. And that from him, and the statements disclosed to his sons, and from them to their kindred of the House of Finarfin was it said.</p><p>
  <strong><em>Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.</em> </strong>
</p><p>Many would be the Ainur condemned beyond the Doors, their Fear taken from Mandos unclad and chained and brought there with her who dwelt in the Outer Darkness. The task to condemn and to sentence all the servants of the Elentari who were found and who were taken would endure into the Second Age beyond the Burning of Hithlum and the dawn of the War of the Elves and the Hell-Queen. Yet first among these and the greatest among them was she that is called Elentari, who may never again take form in visible shape so long as Arda endures, until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom.</p><p>She turned to her fellows among the Ainur, still wearing the shroud-like garment given her by Vaire, and her gaze was stony and her mouth silent, until her eyes met the blue of the Lord of the Seven Winds, and she saw the pain and sorrow there, sorrow rivaled only by that in Arda of the grief of Melian at the passing of her daughter Luthien. Then, in the end, seeing that pain, the stone face split into a horrid smile as her eyes flashed with the hellish light of her stars, and her laughter echoed in a cracked voice as the doors opened and the chill of the outermost Void, a realm neither fully of time nor space but a thing between them rippled outward with frost come to the Eternal Land for a time.</p><p>Up she stepped, still laughing, her voice hoarse and cracked, and then she went beyond the doors as the darkness swallowed her, and in that moment by an artifice of the Feanturi, all that would be taken with her would step through the doors even as they were taken at other times, lest in reopening the doors to admit another the Elentari find a means through them.</p><p>So passed the Kingdom of Varda Elentari and its deeds terrible and dismal upon Arda.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Of the passing of Maedhros, the Oath of the Feanorians, and the Fate of Maglor:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The War of Wrath has ended, but the two Silmarils of the Elentari's crown remain in the possession of the Host of the West. The last of the living Feanorians find themselves facing a great choice, and the Oath proceeds to do its work one last time.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Of all the Quendi of the First Age, given the Doom of the Quendi is said to be to fade into spirits invisible that perhaps can be perceived only by those with the sight to see such entities, only one is known to still be living, if such be the phrase, in Arda in the modern era. That being called Maglor of the House of Feanor, he who repented most, and yet for all that he saw the futility of the Oath was no less damned by its work than others. It is said that some elements of the Red Book owe their shape to his poetry and to his song, and in his agony and futility to fight fate, his warlikeness and treachery and fickleness,  that Maglor of the Feanorians is a distant shadow of Odin, Allfather to the Norse and to the Germanic peoples, and that those Gods of poetry and battle-frenzy may have some deep root to him who endured last. And that Maedhros One-Handed who threw himself into one of the opened veins of the Earth left from the Great War of the Gods is Tyr. What truth lies here can only be guessed, but as there is truth in the realm of fabled Valusia, rival of Acheron and architect of its downfall, and in the Atlantis where he named Kull went from one whose family had ventured to the era of the War of the Hell-Queen and the Elves and been taken thrall and freed and ascended by power to the throne of Westernesse, perhaps here too some entities seen as pagan deities are in truth but the understandings, imperfect and incomplete, of beings so ancient as to predate the Sun and the Moon.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>NEAR THE CAMP OF THE HOST OF THE WEST:</p><p>When the Palace of Eternal Night had fallen, the host of Eldar squatting north of the ruins of Ossiriand had vanished, and so had whatever thing had wielded the weapon of the slain being once named Ilmarë of Valinor before that name would recede into myth and she become known as Utumnonatari of Muspeldor, and perhaps preserved in corrupted form as Sinmara, the name by which she was known both to her servants and to those of her foes who knew either no fear of her or welcomed death at the hands of the Nightfall. With that the thousands who served the Feanorians had made their tentative approaches, not on ships of Teleri make but on cruder rafts provided them by Ulmo's servants with the blessing of Yavanna, that the blackened remnants of what had been great forests get some service for their sacrifice.</p><p>All of the host deserted them in turn, ashamed and willing to forget their service in the ranks of the desperate and the foolish.</p><p>Within the camp there was joy, if muted, and tempered by the awareness of the sorrow and the horrors of war that would linger in nightmares that Lorien and Este would take millennia even in Valarin timescales to bring peace and soothingness to, and which never truly faded.</p><p>Utumnonatari was slain by an Elf-maiden, even one of Ainur heritage, and by a mortal in a palace of her own making. Even if the Nightfall retained its dreaded fear in being wielded to lay low Dor-Lomin that had been, the Elves held that with the capture and the pursuit of the great servants of the Great Enemy, that evil had ended for all time. Rumors came of pardon by the Valar, yet there was counsel among Elves, some eager (as with Celeborn, formerly of Doriath, and with Oropher and his son Thranduil) to retain and even to extend and to delve new kingdoms, and others to take such a pardon and return to seek to heal old wounds.</p><p>The cost defied imagination, and the weight of the Host of the West had laid low Beleriand such that never would it return so long as Arda endured, and true had the Doom of Mandos proven. Hopeless had been the war against the Star-Queen and even the full might of Valinor had been sorely tried and the memory of the Year of Starlight endured long in troubled dreams and sporadic emergence of violent instincts where the memories surged too greatly. Landmasses in the East and the South had shrunk greatly, the Islands that would become Japan carved off from Asia to be, along with what would become Antarctica.</p><p>Not yet so great as the result of the War of Ruin, but even the Feanorians gazed in mute horror at the result of a renewed War of the Powers.</p><p>"Brother, you see this as well as I do," murmured Maglor to Maedhros, who stared at it with his mouth moving silently. Maedhros's jaw jutted firmly shut and he could hear his teeth grinding against each other.</p><p>"Yes, I see it."</p><p>"Could we not but beg to go to Valinor and seek pardon from Melkor and Manwe?"</p><p>"By the Valar and by the Allfather we swore, and it is the Everlasting Darkness that would take us if we seek to defy the Oath, brother. Foolishness was there on that day. Our father's and our own. It has made us monsters, ghosts of ourselves." Maedhros rubbed the stump where his hand had been. </p><p>"How could we appeal to the Allfather even were He to hear such an appeal, brother? There is no salvation for us, there is only the Oath, and seeking to challenge forces that laid low lands so vast we can see but a glimpse of that vastness in their brokenness and the corpses that dot their remnants."</p><p>Maglor nodded, as stiff as Maedhros.</p><p>"Besides, looking at what the oath did to Curufin and to Celegorm we are well rid of it and of that legacy. We shall try, brother, and then all that we were shall be consumed."</p><p>With that the two had moved in stealth enhanced by the power and the work of the Oath to the tent where a group of Vanyar in splendid uniforms stood guard over it. Three of them, with long spears and short-swords in scabbaards. Their eyes were the wary ones of combat veterans, but against the work of the Weaver and the Allfather and the accursed Wyrd that damns all to its patterns woven in the deeps of time no stealth and no wariness were in truth themselves. </p><p>Thus was it that from behind swords slit throats and their Fear passed from their bodies into Mandos, their flesh slumping, the armor exposing a weakness, and each of the sons of Feanor grasped one of the jewels and then groaned in pain as the smell of their burning flesh greeted them.</p><p>Tears fell from their eyes, and they strode painfully outward.</p><p>Not far from where they were, one of the veins of the Earth remained open, one of many traces of the cumulative damage of Star-flame and Valar-magic, the grinding of each against each, and where both combined in dreadful and dismal force. Equally not far from this tent, held near the sea, was the sea itself.</p><p>"So we've come to this," groaned Maedhros, even as a figure clad in resplendent armor with great wings and a spear that shone as brilliantly as the armor strode toward them.  Lost in their own sorrows they missed the tears that streaked the face of Eonwe, who had seen his sister struggling with some madness deep within her and ultimately, for all that he knew, either lost to it or expiring on her own from that same weakness. They missed it, but he did not miss them, nor did other Vanyar, who had heard and felt the passage of their brothers and ringed the Feanorians with spearpoints.</p><p><em>Let them go,</em> Eonwe spoke, in the kind of voice wielded by his master and lord as Voice of Eru. <em>The burning of the Silmarils is the first steps to their fate. So you have reaped, in the end. You have upheld the oath sworn to the bitter end. Go forth and take that which it has given you.</em></p><p>For three leagues ran Maedhros to the vein of the Earth that bled in terrible heat, the reprieve of the herald of the Lord of the Seven Winds ringing with the voices of those slain by the power of the Oath and of its dreadful work within his mind, and as his flesh smoked and the raiment became as ashes he sang in the ancient Quenya dialect that his father had made a point of wielding out of spite to his stepmother, and the fires took him and yet the Silmaril that was in his hands was taken into the maw of the Earth, there to rest until the Last Battle and the Day of Doom. </p><p>Maglor knew his brother's fate and felt it, yet he strode in turn to the sea, to the very westernmost edge beyond which lay the Seven Islands of Death and beyond them the smaller tattered fringes that had been Beleriand and would be wielded anew into Tol Eressea in its grander element for those Noldor who accepted the pardon of the Valar but deemed themselves, and likewise were deemed, unworthy of the Undying Lands in their directness.</p><p>There he stood and looked at himself, the blood of the Vanyar splattered on his clothes, a feral look of madness gleaming, marked with tears of grief and weariness that would only increase with time and his slow fading into a ghost, a fading not completed until the end of the War of Ruin when the world was broken by the clash of Huramba wielded by the great servant of Melkor and the Nightfall, there to become the voice of poetry whose honeyed sorrows were its mead and its draught ever renewed and renewing. Never would Maglor of the Feanorians return to Valinor, nor go to the true West. Until the host of the West would pass beyond the Sea and return to a far green country and a bright sunrise, he sang old dirges and songs of the land to which he could not return, and laments for his grandfather, his father, all of his brothers, his uncles and his cousins, and for the great wrong done by Curufin to his cousin who had refused his father the locks of her hair and all too rightly in the end, as it had proven.</p><p>For a time, in honor of that love he had bestowed on Kemenrond loremaster of what would become Imladris, he would welcomed there and accounted among the family, until the sorrow of the War of the Elves and Utumnonatari became too much and he would move to wander and to be bard and at times warlord.</p><p>So too in the skies did the Silmaril therein become a comet seen in moments of destiny across the skies of Arda, but the ones sent to the deeps of Ulmo's realm and within the lifeblood of Aule's were lost until the end of all things when she beyond the Doors shall return, and on that last battlefield shall come the end of the age and the remaking of Arda into Arda as it was meant to be, and the stars shall become as Silmarils beyond number. And in the lonely singing of the last of the Feanorians would echo the last trace of the Elder Days beyond the passage of Arwen Arien, the twilight of her people.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. The Sundering of the Elves:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The survivors of the First Age and the Wars of Beleriand are sundered by pride, folly, and the lifing of the Ban of the Valar.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>In the hindsight of posterity, few greater boons were given to the Arda that would endure than the presence of the Lady Galadriel, then Artanis-Nerwen of the Teleri and of Doriath. It is said that she was the greatest but far from alone of those who were offered a pardon and an exemption from the Ban, and that she was one of the few to whom not merely the Lonely Isle but return to Valinor itself was offered. When she, then with child, refused, the offering was extended to all in her family and in her extended family to come. This Sundering was a parting of great griefs and yet those Elves who had struggled so bitterly for lands that had offered them little but toil and sorrow found it impossible to accept a return to the Undying Lands. What mentalities humanity would have possessed here are understandable, within limits. What moved the Deathless Elves can be but guessed at.-</em><em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE CAMP OF THE HOST OF THE WEST:</p><p>Artanis, she who had been Nerwen, still felt ashamed to kneel before the presence of all the Valar, the Aratar and those who while lesser had done no greater a service to Arda than the capture and binding of the Fallen, who now remained barred from physical flesh for all time. Her flesh still crawled with what felt like a taint, a sickness introduced to it by the hands and the knife of Curufin, her shoulderblade throbbing with the word he had carved in, and the memory of her shame at being exposed before him and what she'd felt brushing against her, and where his hands had gone. She knew abstractly that Aredhel had never faded and even regained strength afterward when the Avari had done so much worse to her.</p><p>Her hair had healed, though where he had ripped the lock from her head was a single streak of white marring her otherwise perfect hair. The word concealed behind a shawl was still there.</p><p><em>Traitor,</em> carved by a knife of her uncle's make.</p><p>She had not been raped, though she feared Curufin had fully had his designs to do it. But he had....touched her, and somehow, Celeborn had not only not left her but had soothed her, held her, told her that none but Curufin owned responsibility for his deeds. Merely the touch was enough, and that and the feeling of the knife in her back and the horror that this was her own blood-kin who had become <em>this, </em>the kind of animals who fell upon the defenseless and made sport with them that the Eldar would have done no less and if anything more efficiently......</p><p>She heard in a muffled sense as through rushing waters the words of the Doomsayer. Pardon, a return to the Undying Lands. Her hands moved to her belly, where in the time in the wake of the War of Wrath and its length she and her husband had found themselves deeply engrossed in something that would become a distinguishing element of them and their family, something they enjoyed but she felt was some curse introduced to her. She had had her eldest child, her daughter, and then her son. And one other would be born, Estelwen, her daughter of Hope. Born in the time when the Hosts of the West had laid low the North and when no less than the Valie of Rest and healing had aided her.</p><p>She could go, she realized. Estelwen would have a simpler life in that realm, but......</p><p>She sighed, softly, closing her eyes as tears streaked her cheeks, then looked the Valar in the face.</p><p>"I.........I decline the pardon. I have done nothing to deserve the Ban. I shielded my family from the kinslayers, and I suffered at their hands for that deed twice-over."</p><p>Her gaze hardened, as she dried her tears and cursed her own shame and her own weakness.</p><p>"I will remain in the East, and I will fufill that which I sought here. The rule of realms, and the healing of the world's hurts."</p><p>No condemnation came from the Valar, but no blessing and no condoning. With that she went to Celeborn and to her son, now going by the ungainly Adunaic name Gimilzor, and her daughter who was muted and quiet, her gaze at her mother one of worry where her son's face was a carefully practiced mask of perfect apathy.</p><p>As they strode away, others of the survivors among the prominent ones of that era would go forth.</p><p>Artanis sat, a small ways away, upon a rock, her hands on her belly, and stared to the west, in a mixture of emotions that her family could not quite parse. Celeborn had spoken before she had and he had refused for his own reasons, and that had done much to decide her in a way but not all. He too looked to the West, a mixture of longing, regret, and yet anticipation warring with his eyes and subtle movements of his lips.</p><p>Gimilzor simply looked at his feet, and Celebrian at her parent.</p><p>It was Gimilzor who spoke first:</p><p>"Why would we go to a realm where we'd have to see those monsters again in the first place?" His fists were clenched. "It is not our doom to die and to go beyond the world as it is for Men, but at times like this I envy them that freedom. They would not have to face betrayers and murderers."</p><p>His mother said nothing, and his father merely nodded.</p><p>"If I get to a point where I can let go of this anger, and they were to extend that chance, and that pardon, then go I would. But for now....I saw what they did to you, mother. What he did. That wretched son of Feanor makes me ashamed of my kind, both the Quendi and the House of Finwe. They are our cousins, yet...."</p><p>And they followed his hands moving to the east and north and south, and in the midst of the great battlefield reek where the decayed corpses were too numerous for burial and for pyres.</p><p>"This is what dear Uncle Feanor brought us all. Ruin, ashes. Islands of corpses, the Noldor on this side of the sea brought to the brink of ruin. Doriath forbade the the use of Quenya and it is my guess that where Oropher and his son go, or others do, that this ban will hold true. All that 'heroism'" the word was acidic and his voice dark and his eyes flashed with fire, "did is bring about the loss of everything. That's what war is. War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, and those who invoke its hardships deserve all maledictions that can be given to them."</p><p>He took a deep breath and the anger seemed to calm for a moment. "Though few maledictions bit harder than my dear uncle's oaths."</p><p>Artanis still said nothing, looking outward, and silence seemed to fall.</p><p>Celeborn then sat beside her, and place his hand upon her hair, lightly brushing the single white streak, until her eyes turned to him.</p><p>"Long ago, I gave you a name at our wedding, though you have seldom gone by it." His hand slipped from the streak to her shoulder.</p><p>"I think it might help you heal if you did, at this point. You will always be Artanis, who saved her uncle from the would-be slayers, and Nerwen disciple of Melian the Maia."</p><p>He smiled at her as her gaze became more a thing of a person than a shell of flesh that barely moved and seemed to exist by inertia.</p><p>She spoke, softly. "You would have me become Galadriel full time, then?"</p><p>"I would. Not out of shame of your birth names, but as a means to honor your strength. Most of us, even I, would have faded if taken in torment and by one of our own kin, no less. You endure."</p><p>With that last word Galadriel broke down and cried, and held her husband, and the anger that curled in Gimilzor parted for a time, a long time, to come though it did not truly vanish. As Galadriel rocked in his arms, Gimilzor and Celebrian placed their hands on her unmarred shoulder gently.</p><p>It took time for them to realize that another stood there waiting, a tiara adorned with a gem and elaborately woven metal on his head.</p><p>"Ereinion," spoke Celeborn, as he looked at them not with pity but with sorrow and understanding. No comment did he make of Galadriel's weakness, though when he saw the word carven into her by the blade of Curufin he paled and steeled himself to not make some gesture that could ruin what he was seeking to build before it started.</p><p>"With the passage of my Uncle Turgon to Mandos, it is you and I, cousin, who have a claim to the rulership of the Noldor."</p><p>Galadriel looked at him blankly, her eyes widening slightly. She mouthed words and he understood them and responded with a simple nod, before he continued.</p><p>"I aim to establish a kingdom to the east of what was once the easternmost boundary of our people. Two, actually. One we shall call Eregion, the other Lindon. I shall rule from the second."</p><p>He smiled softly, and with a bit of sadness at her.</p><p>"You have endured more than most of us, Artanis. To honor that, I offer to you the Kingdom of Eregion, and the title of Queen."</p><p>Silence fell, for a quarter hour, but to the Deathless to whom the passage of millennia is to a mortal but the span of a decade, it was no time at all before Galadriel nodded, with determination.</p><p>"Artanis it is who takes that crown, but it shall be Galadriel who rules."</p><p>"The name matters not to me, only that one I trust has that crown." And the sadness was replaced by something warmer, and something in Galadriel felt a warmth she had forgotten the fullness thereof, the old ambitions from the Helcaraxe rekindled anew.</p><p>Her son was right, after all. Evil had fallen, the armies laid waste, the Valar were rebuilding the shield from the Year of the Starlight.</p><p>The Star-Queen had been thrust beyond the Wall of Sleep and the Doors of Night, an iron curtain that nothing could pass until the Earth grew old and grey and the time of its fall and rebirth came.</p><p>Before had been a tale of sorrows and of the decay and fall of kingdoms and the slow and terrible defeat culminating in utter ruin. Her mentor's daughter had slain the most dangerous of the Elentari's monsters, once a being of her own kind and now another among the Fallen. And absent her, even if Eldar and other Star-Blooded monsters remained, they would war themselves to extinction given time enough.</p><p>She nodded again as Gil-Galad strode off.</p><p>Others of their rank, who had endured the Long War and seen the fall of the Eldorodrim, would depart with their family, thin and burned and charred, seeking to go with them to seek succor on the Lonely Isle, the Avallone of the new age, where Este and her Maiar would come to tend them and with patience and careful arts. Galadriel herself said farewells to them and embraces and tears were shed, and it was in this context that many she knew of Nargothrond left, one entrusted with a message to her from her brother.</p><p>Many had been taken into Angband, but so few left, and the realization of just how those armies of Star-Blooded had been made and replenished and what the Eldar were sickened the Quendi, and tarnished the luster of the War of Wrath, to many as well.</p><p>For those that remained, the slaying of the Star-Blooded moved from a simple task of war to no less than a blend of holy war and a set of mercy kills, a sacred extermination. Their unquiet souls would never know peace and their transformed states would bring forth new monsters, vengeful and dreadful, to plague the innocent.</p><p>Depleted and weakened by the losses of the War of the Jewels, the Sundering was a sorrow to match that of another of the Battles without sword shed, and sorrowful and lovely were the ballads woven around that parting.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Of Brothers and Sisters, and a Message taken to the House of the Deathless:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In the undying lands, Finrod Felagund walks with his father Finarfin, King of the Noldor, and his wife Amarië. A message comes to him from his sister Artanis, concerning her decision on which side of the Sundering she falls.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>In one of the very few known cases of a story confirmed from the Deathless lands, related, or so it is said, by Glorfindel of Gondolin returned from the grave to Bilbo Baggins, it is known that the lady Galadriel, the Artanis of Doriath in the dawn, sent a message to her brother, Finrod Felagund. Glorfindel was in the room when the message was sent, and it is him who relates the fullness of the incident, and a brief indication that even in Paradise there could still be sorrows before an end came to the Quendi of story and of song.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>THE REBUILT FORMENOS:</p><p>"It is good to see you, old friend." Glorfindel smiled at Finrod and his lovely bride, the golden-headed Amarië of the Vanyar.</p><p>"You too, Glorfindel." He looked to the East. </p><p>"I am the only one of us who walks anew from Mandos, these days. I hope Artanis...." he mused quietly. "She found a good life with Celeborn in Doriath, before the monsters came to burn it. She has children who could live and live more freely absent her shadow. And.....I would welcome having one of the family besides my sister-in-law to speak to."</p><p>Glorfindel laughed, sincerely.</p><p>"It is true that the Lady Nerdanel is not the easiest of company."</p><p>Finrod's laugh was softer and somewhat more awkward, before he turned to give a light kiss to Amarië who gladly welcomed it. Their eyes met in warmth.</p><p>"You, on the other hand, my beloved, are the easiest of company indeed."</p><p>She in turn laughed and reclined on him.</p><p>"It was a long wait, beloved, for your return from the Great Lands but it was worth the patience."</p><p>The memory of the island of the monstrous Hell-Queen and her creatures was far away, yet a brief flash came of the werewolves and their fangs and the screams in pain of his fellow Noldor, all of whom had yet to return from Mandos passed through his eyes. That.....and the monster's eyes that blazed in fury with light that thrummed and echoed with a deadly force.</p><p>Amarië was patient, she knew that those who had endured the harshness of death interwoven with fate and the Fallen had moments like this. Freezing, sometimes having strange whiplash, shouting and acting as if the horrors had not ceased. The sickness of Artanis, it had been called in the old days and that unkindly. A phrase from the first who had ventured to Arda and seen its terrors, and all had wondered then. Now it was called the Oath-Fruit, and treated in far greater kindness. One did not wage a war on that which had been one of the greatest among the Powers without lasting consequences. </p><p>When his eyes resumed their focus, they strode in the diamond-sand of the uttermost West. Darkness had come here once, long ago. It had come in spider-form and then been dispelled by a bolt of star-flame and that horrid gong-like sound that had shattered the clouds before that which had been akin to the Music of the Ainur had echoed in that resounding chorus-chant, the backdrop of all creation. Now, Aman was lesser than it had been, but it was still Aman. All that was good in Arda was here, beauty beyond reckoning. Even the greatness of his realm, Nargothrond-that-was, was austere and as ashes.</p><p>The ship came, and on that ship one who surprised him. Daeron he had expected, but there was another, more heavily shrouded than he,</p><p>So many of those who made the choice to return were required to remain on the Lonely Isle. Those who had been Sindar, among them lords of Doriath of old.....</p><p>He murmured "Daeron," surprised. Those who returned, and went to Avallone, were marked often by shrouds and bandages with the most potent work of Este the Healer upon them. The hellish light that had gleamed in the eyes of she who was called the Utumnotari, he suspected, and more intense on the body and the person of the Fallen. Daeron had loved and then hated Luthien Tinuviel, before her destiny had arrived in the form of a man splattered in blood and with him his own fate. Daeron had, so some of the many who had come to Mandos with souls disfigured and healed slowly and carefully by the arts of the Feanturi, come to repent of that hatred and had been among those who had escaped the thralldom of Angband, and survived the massacre at the Mouth of Sirion, of which news had come.</p><p>He had heard tales, too, of his sister that had another reason why he wished for Artanis's return, but this was news too sorrowful to dwell upon and it was not spoken aloud. Old wounds did not die easily, and his father, the King of all the Noldor, had another reason why relations with him and with Nerdanel were strained, for those who had actually done the wrong were elsewhere where Nerdanel was there. Her husband had been....predatory....toward his sister, his uncle. And his cousin's actions to his sister....Daeron's look was not the one he was hoping for. </p><p>"Amarië, love, please go on ahead, Glor and I shall catch up after a time." Understanding, she smiled and gave him one quick brief kiss on his cheek before he turned to Daeron. </p><p>"Any news of Artanis?"</p><p>"Yes, Lord Felagund." Daeron blanched, slightly."But it is not I that shall give it." </p><p>To the one who passed behind him he stepped aside and she lowered her hood.</p><p>"Finduilas," he gasped.</p><p>"Uncle," she smiled.</p><p>"I had heard you were dead."</p><p>A shadow passed over her face.</p><p>"Yes, in the fall of Nargothrond." She sighed. "I was taken captive to Angband, hence why I look like something that went to the healer's and forgot to die."</p><p>She sighed at another note.</p><p>"Aunt Artanis will be staying in the East for....a time." He started.</p><p>"My brother has offered her a realm of her own.:"</p><p>Finrod's nose twitched. The joy that Finduilas had lived warred with the sorrow that Artanis was still pursuing the dream and folly of the rebellion their accursed uncle had launched, in spite of the Kinslaying, and in spite of what must have happened to her.</p><p>"You are allowed here?"</p><p>She smiled and nodded.</p><p>"My suffering at the hands of the Star-Queen is....a part of that." A shadow passed further over her face and she seemed to stare at some strange memory and a name, thought to be of one dead, crossed her lips.</p><p>Finrod shrugged, the Utumnonatari had blighted the world and burned Dor-Lomin with dread Nightfall, gaining a reputation greater than any other servant. There were many of the returned who awoke screaming the name Utumnoatari or her true name, that which she had held once.</p><p>If nothing else Beren and Luthien had over-avenged his death by slaying no less than the most powerful of the Ainur. Part of him, a secret part, wondered in truth if it were possible so neatly to do such a thing. She had not been depleted, merely wounded in a form and no doubt scarred, and her mistress who spent herself hollow commanding the great starlight had yet endured forty years of war against the full armies of Valinor that were returning in greater numbers, likewise scarred and wounded in body and mind and dreams. And even to the end had been a force of nightmares that it had taken the Great King departing from his throne and the terrible time when the stars had reached down with their caresses to the Undying Land to deal that breaking.</p><p>He blinked, took a deep breath, and then spoke to his niece of many things, of gardens and of kings. In quietness they spoke, and the darkness that had lurked at the edges of a monstrous light that gleamed with thrumming resonance in the Deep Arts of Creation banished, and in part of his soul, a quiet loneliness lifted, even if not quite as he had hoped. </p><p>Within a quarter hour, they moved on. Amarië was waiting, and there was much to see and to do, in the uttermost west and the realm of the Powers of Arda.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Of the Comet of Mandos:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A brief moment in the deathless lands where Elwing of the lineage of Melian and Bright Earendil the Mariner enjoy one of many days together in the realms beyond Time and Space.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Eärendil of the lineage of the House of Hador and Elwing of the line of Beren and Luthien had brought the War of the Gods to Arda. To Eärendil was it given to live among Elves, and to voyage in his great ship Vingilot beyond the Doors of Night each day, and at times to come with his ship as a great comet, an omen of divine power and of judgment. On the nights where his Silmaril blazed alone was it safe to gaze upward where the comet traversed, a rule followed cautiously, for where his power walked came great good but also great evil. To Elwing was it given to fly during the day, taking to herself the form of a bird, a gift among many given to her lineage by descent from the Ainur, and during the day to be with her husband, time that was eternal and time-bound in each day and no less meaningful. Yet it is the Comet of Judgment that likewise guards against she who dwells beyond the Doors of Night, and it is said in the Last Battle and Day of Doom that it shall be the Vingilot that descends from the skies to warn humanity that the Foe is coming from the stars once more, for the stars shall be right and that which is not dead can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die.-</em><em>The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda</em>, translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>Eärendil girded himself for another of those long and terrible nights. Long ago had he bypassed the necessity of sleep, a gift and Doom of the Powers that marked his role with his ship. It was strange, this. He had once been potentially a man, if not entirely so in fact or name, and one of the Quendi. Yet the Quendi did need sleep, even Elwing, quite literally descended from one of the Powers that had made the world at its dawn needed it. He was awake, the vigilant sentinel and alone among humanity and Elves and those of the incarnate world was it his task at night to sail here, into this place. </p><p>In later eras it would become a misunderstanding that the Void was so simple a thing as the vast emptiness lit by Varda's stars and their legacies,  the endless dissonant howling called by the Star-Mad the Music of the Spheres. Yet this was not so. The Void was neither of time nor space nor the regions between them, it was something else, of the Outside and of the laws of the Outside. Here he could hear in the uttermost emptiness strange sounds, drums. Drums that beat rhythms no human hands could form, though they and the flutes with them were soft, low things that perhaps the Ainur heard differently but hovered like the beating of insect wings just at the edge of the range ears could hear.</p><p>This was a wild realm, cold and unforgiving, a realm where absent the shield not merely of the Valar but of He who he had seen but briefly on His great throne where that music was louder and far moreso and he had felt <em>something </em>that moved and shifted seemingly against a thin fabric of existence and emerged from it <em>transformed </em>none could endure for long without the soul fading, called to that realm of throne and drum and flute. Here there was seeming emptiness, but it was not truly so.</p><p>It-no, in truth she, to think of her as an It was to make the mistakes of folly that could lead to a lapse of vigilance, to her somehow finding a means to reach out beyond the Doors, telescoping time and time's laws, was not laughing today. Often she did laugh, a mad warbling note. She wasn't muttering to herself in peals that echoed deafeningly loud where the others, her great horde, came to her one by one.</p><p>She spoke lucidly, with shades of what she had been.</p><p>
  <em>
    <strong>Ah, the root and the offspring, the bright and morning star. He who holds the keys of the Doors and of Death. The sire of spawn of my own lineage and of my own line, no less. Come to be warden on the jail? For all eternity that is your reward for emulating my path, for redeeming creation. Alone among mankind, among Elvendom, you come here into my domain each day and each hour, bearing a thing that was stolen from me by your wife's ancestor, daughter of the traitors. Such service, bright Eärendil, and such a reward for it. To be jailer and warden of a being far greater than you. </strong>
  </em>
</p><p>He could feel her and the smothering weight of her presence, somehow more ominous in darkness than she had been in light.</p><p>
  <em><strong>You are here with Old Night beyond the Doors, little man-Elf.</strong> </em>
</p><p>Yet she could not approach him too far, for the light of the Silmarils once on the crown of a form of flesh repelled her spirit and the lesser things that were with her waiting for the stars to become right. and for their hour to return to come anew. He remained on the other side of the Doors through the night, the light of the Silmaril keeping her away and her words echoing lucidly, in angry tones of vengeance and of horrid obscenities she would slake on the flesh of the Dancer, of vengeance to come when the stars would drink the oceans dry and the souls of mortals become as fodder to her to toy with and to remake in all the ways she would have wished. </p><p>Arien's heat was something registered only by the way the Silmaril flashed, and he heard her laughter, mad and howling with a note of sorrow, at points within it.</p><p>
  <strong><em>One day the stars will be right, little child of my accursed Father. And when they are right, your little night-light will go before me, and once more as in the dawn of days I shall descend upon Arda in power and majesty greater than any other of the Valar, and the stars shall sing my name and welcome me as their ruler and their queen anew. The stars shall be right, human, and the Earth shall burn in a holocaust of freedom, skulls upon skulls. And of them I shall build a throne and Nessa shall grovel before my feet lest I shut her husband behind the Doors in turn!</em> </strong>
</p><p>Her rants faded and so did the infinite coldness of the Void as his ship came in through the day.</p><p>By him hovered a great bird, an albatross of the kind that had landed on his ship with the Silmaril between her breasts. The Albatross became his wife, not clad so lovely as she was then in one way, but as lovely in another in a simple dress of silver with a golden fringe shaped like fire, and the light in her eyes was as lovely as it had been then. There was a disquieting element in the gleam akin to that of the mental images he'd seen of Old Night, and the way her eyes had shone when she was brought to the realm of the Outer Dark, but he had long since known the secret, even if part of him could not repress an emotional shudder at what he saw, and how he saw.</p><p>"A good night, my husband?" Her voice was as soft as it had been in earlier days, even if both knew sorrow and worry for their sons.</p><p>"The usual," his phrasing taciturn and pronunciation clipped. "The prisoner needs a new routine."</p><p>Elwing laughed and laughed and laughed and her laughter was silvery and yet in the laughter of one whose blood among the Ainur was Vardarin there were small syllables that sparked with power and resonance. His family had the blood of she who had hung the stars in them.</p><p>Was he blessed, or accursed? He did not know, nor was he certain in how he could or would answer that question, nor if there was answer to be had.</p><p>They landed at her tower and it was a blessed day in a blessed land, Elwing telling him that the birds had seen their sons, and that their sons were hale, and strong. Even news of a land built and delved by the Ainur, built for Kemenros, who had been given a choice all their lineage would wield, down to the last traces of Ainur blood that could produce visible effects. It was called Andor, land of Gifts, but the Edain had given it two names, one in Adunaic, Westernesse. And the other was one that would linger in tales of wonder and splendor, later overriden from the time of Ar-Adunakhor and especially in that of Ar-Pharazon the Golden, Master of Mankind by the will of the Star-Kindler, who brought an Imperial Truth, that Eru was no truth, and that only in the glory of Elbereth Githoniel was there release from the horrors of Death.</p><p>For then it was a wonder beginning to be formed, and the dawn of the reign of Kemenros Tar-Minyatur would be heralded the first day of the Second Age.</p><p>Both smiled, at the thought of one of their sons become a King, and the other to become Kemenrond, master of all lore, and knowledge of the old days and the old ways, a counselor in wisdom, and one of the last great Elf-Kings in power, if not in the technicality of the title. Evil was growing behind the Doors, sealed in all its manifold shapes and forms, a thing of Terror but Terror contained. It would grow and it would wait, wait until the Stars were Right, and then when their chorus sang with the potency of the Age of Dawn, all that was would end. Nothing remained, they believed, that could harm the inhabitants of Arda. The Gods had gone to War, and good had triumphed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Of the Creation of Numenor and the wedding of the Dancer and the Valiant:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Houses of the Edain that waged the Long War and fought the Star-Queen have been rewarded for their friendship to the Quendi, and for this the Gods seek to grant them a blessing, Numenor, the Land of Gift, where the heritage of the Elves within the bloodline of royalty and the masses and that of the Ainur will grant them long lives, half a millennium, and the greatest and most wondrous era of humanity shall dawn. But first, the Valar set the stage;</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Ah, Westernesse, Numenor. Atlantis. Once thought to be merely a myth as with the Elder Age when the Old Ones were and are and shall be again, it has been found, if such be the word, near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge by an expedition deep-sea diving and exploring ruins that produced strange soundings. The Downfallen realm was a gift of Gods, and sprawled across the Atlantic at a size half that of Africa. The apex of humanity, never to be equalled. Not in the goodness of its dawn under the brother of the Loremaster of all Arda, nor the horrors of its fall under the lordship of the Golden king who proclaimed himself Emperor of the Earth and Master of Mankind. The ruins are awesome, as is the recognition that here there is proof that a divine agency did exercise undeniable power in human affairs. Of Westernesse the tales of the Second Age have much to say, some of it wondrous, some of it horrid. Of it in the First Age, there is the Founding.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>For those mortals who would have witnessed it, it would have been an awe-inspiring and eerie sight, the end of the First Age not in fire and fury and the elemental wrath of the harmonics of Starlight, but in one of the last acts of truly divine creation since the Music of the Ainur. It began with Ulmo rising from the depths of the ocean, clad in his own thought and mail like the scales of a fish, eyes dark as the depths of the infinite ocean, his trident shining and thrumming with power as the islands, purified of the slain, were called by his power and that of Aule, who stood next to him just over the water, eyes glowing, Tulkas in turn literally taking each of the Islands and joining them together. Of the scraps of old Beleriand delved in more depth and hallowed by the great and the lesser of the Valar was Andor to be built.</p><p>Island joined to island under the power of the Music as bone to bone, and from each joining more of the flesh of rock and soil that would become the great realm of Westernesse formed, many beautiful things given roots in turn from Kementari, whose eyes gleamed and her song echoed with resonant power. The dances of Nessa hallowed the island, a labor after which she would be joined to Tulkas, and with each of these elements there were greater things. With them the Ever-Young hallowed the seeds her sister placed, and the Valaroma echoed and marked each strip of land warded, shielded, made and remade anew. </p><p>The Lord of the Seven Winds shaped the wind currents around the island, that would echo with subtle reminders of the powers and blessings of the Lords of the West, and each according to their kind. For a manner of three months in mortal time did the Valar labor even beneath the eyes of Arien, an island of wonders that would never be seen before, the closest that humanity would ever come to the blessed Land of Aman. Not to the Valar was it given to remove the Gift of Men that is the boon of Death and removal from the pure writ of the Music. Last of them to give his aid was Melkor, who in a display of that which was his own portion in the When the labor was finished, on a fleet provided by the Teleri, in perfect resonance to that which would be the end of Westernesse, Kemenros Tar-Minaytur, he who had become the first King of the realm arrived out of the deeps of the sea, and in unity and togetherness strode the first of the Edain of Westerness, blessed with wondrous gifts.</p><p>To the Meneltarma, last of Westernesse to remain above the ocean in its Downfall they rose and sang hymns in honor of He who is Allfather, and bowed to the Valar standing before the island in incarnate majesty.</p><p>When the bells of Numenor chimed to mark the first hour of the first day of Westernesse, the Second Age of Arda began.</p><p>To Valinor, it began with the wedding, at long last, of Nessa and Tulkas where the Dancer danced before Valinor, and in the dance and the merriment, in the revelry and in the gaiety there was a release of tension and sorrow, of the wounds of the terrible and squalid war that had been waged among the Great Lands. Long and joyous was the ceremony, and Nessa, who had waited until the monster was shut beyond the Doors knew more than most that Utumnonatari, who would arise as the ghost of her predecessor's malice and scar the world no less in her own ways still lived. Yet she, unlike the Elentari, was not in the beginning evil, and she had her chance.</p><p>She would rise and bring goodness and wonder, or she would fall and a new monster of flame and ruin would arise, and new suffering. Either way, tomorrow's worries would take care of themselves. For today, there was dancing, dancing on her own before the Ainur and the Elves, not the dances of war that had laid low the Star-Queen and her hellish eldritch gleam, but simpler dances, and there was the joy that love's labors had been won. Her husband's ruddy face gleamed, the terrible burns of the Star-Queen healed, and even dour Melkor was smiling and looking with honor on his wife's gleaming shine as she traversed the day, a look of softness in his face matched only by the joy of his smile at her and his grinning and blessing and officiating over the marriage, honoring Tulkas and Nessa on the Holy Mountain.</p><p>The Valar had made the great Gift to Men, and as prayers to Eru rang, Nessa's dances concluded and she turned to Tulkas and pressed herself to him, kissing him with the long wait satisfied in an outburst of passion that led to cheers from the other Aratar, not least from the Great King.</p><p>Even Melian, who had taken with her a stone from her husband's grave in the Menegroth during the war, had smiled and relished a chance to join in dances with Eonwe and Mairon, the Maiar enjoying the end of the God-War no less than the Valar, and holding their own revelry both intertwined with the broader one and slightly separate.</p><p>The war was over. And from sorrow and horror, there was joy.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Of Mount Doom and the first foundations of Muspeldor:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Utumnonatari, who vanished in the wake of the War of Wrath, finds herself in a realm ringed by mountains on three sides. She goes to one mountain, Amon Amarth, a volcano that slumbered, waiting one who would awaken it, and unsheathes Nightfall and ignites it. In the fires of Orodruin, the first steps to a new kingdom are laid where the Star-Blooded shall be drawn.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>In the end of the First Age, too, though not recorded and merely surmised by the wise in retrospect came the first fires of Mount Doom, that is Orodruin and Amon Amarth. In the beginning this was held to be merely that normal process whereby volcanoes produce their destructive and creative aspects. In retrospect, the realm of Muspeldor, Land of the World-Destroyers, the Muspelheim of the Norse, began with those fires and so did the process whereby the Lady of Light began her path to revealing herself as Utumnonatari, the Sinmara of the Second and Third Ages. None among the Wise, whose attention was drawn to the dawn of Westernesse and the raising of Lindon and Eregion and the efforts of the Elves, noticed that a single volcano amongst all those in Arda had erupted. In time to come, all would rue that they had not moved upon the pall of smoke that rose even to the edges of Lindon and to the Havens.-The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda, </em>translation by Neil Gaiman.</p><p>She who had been known by one name and who would now be defined by a title she had taken before had found herself here, of all places. Far, far to the east. Away from the ruins of Beleriand, away from the pitiful traces of fallen glory trying to mummify an age that had passed. Here, in the east, was a land of darkness shaped by mountains of flame, yet there was one mountain, the Mountain of Fate, that awaited a symbol, one who would come to it and kindle the fires. It was a volcano, after a fashion, but a work of her mother's. Perhaps at some distant point in the clashes of the Powers she had delved it to ruin one of Aule's works and it had been forgotten, or there were other elements.</p><p>She strode up the mountain calmly, clad in golden armor, her scabbard clanging against her. Her height and weight were different now, she was taller. As tall as one of the Valar and her majesty no less severe and devastating in person. She could not afford to go in the form of a shining being of singing light that echoed in the currents of mortality, and in truth she did not want to. She had Fallen, once. She could Fall again. Or....</p><p>She mused to herself, not noticing how much her voice had changed and altered, reflecting resonances that were not her own.</p><p>
  <strong><em>I could fix the world. </em><em>The Valar came here and laid it waste, but they have left it to rot. They did not even bother to bury the corpses save where they moved the islands to become that wretched thing in the ocean.</em> </strong>
</p><p>She smiled.</p><p>
  <em><strong>I can fix the world, and atone for the crimes of that which was. And make it better.</strong> </em>
</p><p>To the top of the mountain, now, and its caldera, and her gauntlet grasped the hilt of her blade and she drew it in a motion practiced and yet unfamiliar still as her dual shape remained in this time of inconsistency.</p><p>The blade moved and hovered over the mountain and though it and she seemed ludicrously small the world seemed to hold its breath in a moment that was apparent in a wink of time in Aman and moreso in Arda itself. Fire began to flow up the blade like a liquid, not quite her mother's star-flame, nor her own, but something else.</p><p>It lit against her helm and her armor and she gloried in it and in its sight.</p><p><em><strong>A fire truly made to ravage worlds</strong></em>, she purred. <strong><em>Such gifts you gave me, mother. The handmaiden you tortured and burned is no more.</em></strong> <em><strong>Her and her legacy, I bury with this sword's flame. Yet still I wield Nightfall, for it is the destiny of I, Sinmara, ruler of the land that shall either make the world or break, that it be so. </strong></em></p><p>Nightfall she raised in her hand, and its heat began to resonate within the mountain as what slumbered there awoke.</p><p>
  <strong><em>No Gods, no masters! No Valar, no Music of He who because he made us believes he determines our fate! Ilmarë is dead, Erinti never was. Here, on this mountain, my fate is mine!</em> </strong>
</p><p>And with that the Nightfall flipped, the blade pointed downward, and a blast of flame erupted from it and the mountain began to rumble and to pour forth fire and smoke that darkened the sky. Starlight, in its fashion and in its shape, gleamed in the eyes of she who was now Sinmara, and in that minute and in that hour, the first paths to the step of the wars to come was sown. Yet from there, she strapped the sword to her back and took the form of a great bird, not quite an eagle, but a raptor, and flew her way to the north, to where the Elves were building and humanity spreading and settling out.</p><p>No Gods, no Fate. And in her destiny, she knew, she would reshape the world such that it would always bear the mark of her presence, and where her mother would recede into legend and memory, she would endure for good and ill, unto the end of all things.</p><p>It was a sight that would stick in memory and be rued among other things that were missed when a party of Elves moving south into the infant Eregion to begin to build cities saw a strange sight, a gigantic bird with feathers of bright blue hue and swirling elements like light....and a blade and a scabbard attached to its back, the scabbard showing hints of artfully worked gemstones.</p><p>The next day, a group of Men were the first to make the acquaintance of a new entity who would shape the future of the Second Age, at first seemingly good and all too clear to the truth in later years. She was a being that gleamed with a warm and hypnotic light, and she called herself in a name that sounded Elvish but wasn't. quite, Aurelian, the Light-Bearer. She seemed a woman of wealth and taste, and in that warmth and welcome, Aurelian came to what would become one of the many roots of the future Dale and Erebor, and brought great wonders and arts, and taught of the deep secrets that were beyond the ken of the Men of the Second Age.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. An ending and a beginning:</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>One Age ends and another Age begins, and above all, the starlight sings and thirsts and aches for its firstfruits, and secret ships are delved on the hidden orders of the new ruler of the Star-kindred.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The First Age had ended in blood and tears and fire and fury, lands blasted to ruin and to ashes. Valiantly the Noldor had come to Arda against the warning of their Doom, turning on their kin in Star-Madness not once, but thrice. In a war protracted and utterly hopeless and without remit of sorrow, they had waged war against the Elentari who had come from the stars and brought her images with her. Mighty kingdoms had they raised, and she had overcome them and their armies and left not even shattered traces of the rubble, only the memories of sorrow and defeat leavened with heroism as that of Ecthelion slaying the Lord of Balrogs on the walls of Gondolin, or Fingolfin's great duel with the Star-Queen.</p><p>One had come, sailing to the Undying Lands and even now his Silmaril was the light that kept Old Night contained behind the Doors to snap and rage in impotence, a shell of herself, splendor fallen into ruin.</p><p>Varda Elentari they had taken, thrust beyond the Doors of Night, beyond the Wall of the World and the Wall of Sleep, into a timeless void. A guard was set, Maiar of her own kindred who did not fall, those most determined lest that which rages and howls behind the doors awaken before the stars are right. The Star-Voyager himself watches in the higher elements of the Void, that no elements be left, and Evil take anew embodied form and glow with the light that howls for blood and is never sated. Yet the lies and the fears that Varda Elentari, Old Night, she who set the stars to burn and aches for the ending of all life as a blight on a cosmos of order and great beauty, sowed in the hearts of Men and of Elves do not truly die.</p><p>Ever does Evil renew itself, even if with the passing of the Utumnonatari Sinmara of Muspeldor it no longer takes a bodily incarnate form that sustains and nourishes in it is most horrid shapes. Unto the end of all things, when the Battle of Battles comes, and the world is laid waste and renewed shall this be.</p><p>Here ends the tale of the War for the Jewels, if it has passed from the high and the beautiful to ashes and fire, such is the fate of the Arda Marred. Yet it is said that in the end of time, Mandos has decreed the fate that shall mark the restoration of Arda.</p><p>The time of the Last Battle and Day of Doom shall begin when a dread winter sets, four years of ice and cold. A sword time, a red time, when children shall slay parents and parents children, and all that is of human affection shall be lost. The stars shall begin to sing not with muted elements in dreams and to those who gaze upon them in pursuit of false knowledge but in the resonance of the Dawn-Time. The Sun shall be darkened and the Moon turn red, and Arien of the Valar and Tillion of the Maiar shall fall to the sky broken, and in the darkness shall erupt from the Doors of Night renewed and replenished she who is the Star-Queen. From the stars shall descend they who went up to them, and the Old Ones shall return for revelry and for ruin, slaughter of man by man replaced by the old monsters, the Star-Blooded, come to wreak ruin and death.</p><p>Orome shall blow the Valaroma and Ea shall tremble, and from the south shall come Sinmara with sword of fire to the Last Battle, the Star-Queen and the Queen of the World-Destroyers together on the battlefield.  To the aid of the Gods shall march Ar-Pharazon the Golden, last King of Numenor and that army that has remained silent and unmoving on golden thrones in the Undying Lands, and to them shall be the task to slay the revived monsters of the Star-Queen, a task that shall grant them the Doom of Men come round at last. Tulkas and and Nessa shall fight the Star Queen and the Queen of the World Destroyers, with Fingolfin who dealt the wounds to the Elentari that do not heal on the left and Turin Turambar on the right. Sinmara shall slay Fingolfin, yet Turambar shall slay the Star-Queen and then the Queen of the World-Destroyers herself, and in grasping the sword Nightfall, shall bring the flames of renewal to the world.</p><p>An evening shall pass, and then morning shall come, and Eru shall take his throne and what shall be shall be judged, each according to their kind, and Arda shall be made Unmarred and the stars shall be no more things of terror and horror that thirst for ruin and the end of all things, but things of comfort, light to mirror that of Telperion, and even the worst things of evil and evil's great ruin shall be revealed all along to have been in the Music of the Ainur, and the good that is to be revealed shown thereby.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>